Everybody is to be more nice like me

More Stedman and McLaren. Sorry. Fair warning, so that you can stop reading now if you’re fed up to the back teeth with them.

Stedman is annoyed that gnu atheists don’t take his and McLaren’s advice on what “will benefit the atheist movement” but instead dare to offer “disagreements and accusations that McLaren, Luna, I (and many who affiliate with us) don’t have the best interests of the atheist movement in mind.”

That’s an odd complaint. It seems like a tangent. I don’t really know what they have in mind, I know only what they do, and what they do is talk a lot of nasty smack about gnu atheists, most of which is exaggerated at best.

Then Chris does a long complaint about people thinking he agrees with every word of every guest post. Well he said of McLaren’s guest post that it was a doozy, in a good way, and that it was “a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” Yes, I thought he pretty much agreed with it. If he doesn’t want us to think that, he could always refrain from lavishly praising the guest posts in his introductions.

My ask? That commenters here strive to see posts for what they are; that they make every attempt to assume that the author has the best of intentions and go about raising their disagreements in a way that is civil and demonstrates a genuine desire to get at the heart of the truth.

But that’s too much to ask, giving the energetically insulting tone and substance of McLaren’s post. It’s also a double standard. It’s telling commenters to be more “civil” than McLaren is.

[Note: I’m not going to go down the path of defending the more personal criticisms directed at me — I have no interest in humoring the accusations that I might not actually be an atheist, or that I don’t have the best of intentions concerning the atheist movement, for which I’ve sacrificed an incalculable amount of time, money, and energy. There’s really no reasoning with such baseless criticism.]

Self-important and self-pitying both at once. Again: I don’t know what his intentions are, I know only what he does; what he does is throw mud at gnu atheists at frequent intervals. This is a crowd-pleasing thing to do, so the self-pity thing isn’t going to work.

Now McLaren.

But the anger that was returned in many of the comments (and in retort posts on other sites) was none of these things. A subset of the anger I witnessed contained no respect, no boundaries, and no rules. It was an anger that involved direct slander against me, personal attacks against Chris Stedman (for daring to give me a public forum), and repetitive attempts to silence me, dehumanize me, and control my intellectual output and my voice.

Those are very strong accusations. She gives no examples, no links, no names, no evidence. I don’t believe her. I think she made a lot of rude and inaccurate accusations about new atheists (and maybe some gnus), and got a lot of rude replies as a result. She uses her own anger to inflate the putative crimes of other people, while wrapping herself in the flag of Niceness. It didn’t work last time and it doesn’t work this time. It convinces people who already like that kind of thing, but it repulses people who already despise it.

That’s the trouble with setting yourself up as the Ambassador of Nice. It means you have to be able to perform Niceness yourself. McLaren is transparently bossy and hostile, so she made a mistake thinking she could do that. Another failed diplomatic mission.

I just read McLaren’s post. Well, most of it. It’s overlong. She asserts that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens deal (only) in polemics, then spends a great deal of time explaining what polemics are and why you can’t build a movement on them. So: incorrect premise, followed by belabored and irrelevant argument about why too much polemics is teh bad.

[Note: I’m not going to go down the path of defending the more personal criticisms directed at me — I have no interest in humoring the accusations that I might not actually be an atheist, or that I don’t have the best of intentions concerning the atheist movement, for which I’ve sacrificed an incalculable amount of time, money, and energy. There’s really no reasoning with such baseless criticism.]

There is a scene in that movie when the Martians come out of their space ships and greet the waiting humans with the words “we come in peace” – and then immediately start shooting with their ray-guns. The humans are put off their guard by the “we come in peace” line and are easy for the Martians to defeat. This is the same tactic that accomodationists use (OK, minus the spaceships and ray-guns!). Do not judge them on what they claim to be doing. Judge them by their actions.

Hertta, I’m going to hope you were sarcastic but assume you werent, apologies if I’ve been poe’d. Writing about specific people is not civil? Why then, Hertta, I do believe every history textbook since ever ought to be thrown right out the window for daring to speak about . . . individuals! You didn’t think that post out all the way and it seems to suggest that you personally lack the objectivity and critical thinking necessary to understand the arguments made in this post. Saying that the behavior is everywhere and failing, just as McLaren has, to cite any sources at all does nothing for your credibility and everything to degrade it. Why should I believe some douche on the internet who makes claims without evidence? I shouldn’t. So cite some sources or gtfo.

I’m sorry, Loki. I should have been clearer, that I was indeed being sarcastic. The expressions I used are taken directly from McLaren’s post. She said:

Stranger still was this demand (though I’ve seen it leveled at others): If I did not point out specific instances of uncivil, polemical behaviors, then my argument was deemed moot. At first, I thought, “They’re kidding, right? This behavior is everywhere in atheism.” It seemed to be a time-wasting diversionary ploy. But then I wondered, “Could this question be sincere?”

If it is sincere, let me explain: I deliberately chose to write about these uncivil behaviors as trends within the movement, rather than making examples of specific people[ii]. No one had directly offended against me, so why should I offend against anyone else? Instead, I used my own anger to write about attitudes, behaviors, and discourse styles … but not about specific people, because that’s not civil. There are ways to use anger that are non-polemical, non-directed, and most importantly, non-oppressive.

And:

Though I was saddened to see this unwarranted behavior played out like a game, like a nightmare romp of the id, I had seen it before. It’s nothing new. In fact, it is the precise behavior I objected to in my post.

Oh man. Glanced through the comments section. It’s utterly utterly painful and frustrating to read. It’s funny, on occasion reading through long comments sections, I have pondered how each flare up will be percieved when the next flare up happens, whether any lessons will be learned, whether any substantive points will have been taken on board. And here I am, disappointed again.

It’s just clear that Mclaren in particular has honed in and focused on any minor slight she could find and completely ignored the substantive and civil responses she got to the original article.

It’s particularly galling because, as I recall, there was a post about her previous employment which wasn’t entirely fair, but also shouldn’t have negated everything else that was said, espiecally as it was a different person. I want to say it was improbable joe, but I really need to check that. And I also don’t think it’s a big deal as a thing to say. So if it was joe, I’m not inclined to crucify him for it. But whatever was said in one post doesn’t detract from what was said by Hitch and Reaux, amongst others, in the comments section of that mclaren post.

Like I say, frustrating. And I will double check the mclaren piece’s comments later and make sure I’ve got my names right.

The atheist movement? Could someone demonstrate this movement for me please, is it done while sitting down or standing, while walking perhaps? I appear to have missed it in my indoctrination into atheism…..oh, that’s right, I missed being indoctrinated as well.

As a commenter who had some uncomplimentary things to say to both McLaren and Luna, I get the feeling that I’m one of the folks Stedman has in mind when he complains about the responses to those late-April posts.

So I thought I needed to lob in two cents on the referenced thread as well—and, having done so, I see my comment is now being held for moderation. I wonder whether this a new general policy on NonProphet Status (a real possibility), or whether it only applies to overt critics of Stedman and company. Hey, I’m from Minnesota, just like Chris; doesn’t that mean I’m indisputably “nice”?

Anyway, given the possibility that it’ll never show up over there, I guess I have to post my response to McLaren over here, as well:

There’s a notable contrast between the level of substance involved in the work of Gnubashers like Stedman, McLaren, and Luna, and Gnus’ responses to same.

I posted lengthyrebuttals to both McLaren’s and Luna’s ugly late-April posts. Numerous other commenters posted similar critiques. These responses went into considerable concrete detail regarding the fallacies and dishonesties that suffused both posts.

Since then, first Luna and now, here, Stedman and McLaren have responded to their critics not with concrete defenses of their challenged claims but rather with continual moaning and wailing about how mean their opponents are. McLaren’s insistence that dealing concretely with the problems her critics identified would amount to “tak[ing] our eyes off the prize” is comical; it’s a sorry excuse for a failure to address the reality of her own misconduct in April.

McLaren’s April 26 post was a dishonest attack on innocent people. This needs to be opposed, not least because it plays directly into a similarly dishonest cultural narrative that marginalizes and dehumanizes atheists. To the extent that, as McLaren declares here, “fierce approaches are actually the only approaches being protected,” it’s because those approaches are the only ones being attacked with the kind of lies and mud that McLaren and Luna flung last month.

As I pointed out on April 28, McLaren’s contentions that (1) the “Fractious Four”‘s work uniformly consists of “deeply emotional appeal[s] made not just with anger, but with rage”; (2) “atheists who aren’t offended by religion, or who actively work to understand and communicate with religious people, are branded pejoratively as ‘accommodationists’”; and (3) Gnus, unlike the superior McLaren and Stedman, are incapable of community building… all these contentions are false to fact. They are meretricious lies, and it is not “dehumanizing” McLaren to call her to account for them.

You can keep on pretending, Ms. McLaren, that it is your ballyhooed “[m]oderating approach[]” that earns you scorn here. No doubt that’s a comfortable way to construct the current exchange in your own head. Nevertheless, it’s just another untruth. You are not being scorned for “moderating,” but for lying. And several of us have documented and explained the nature of your dishonesty in some detail. You can go on ignoring all of those critiques and wishing them away, but they stand—regardless of your disinterest in responding to them in terms.

I can’t begin to tell you how much time I was squandering on cleaning out spam on the old system. It was an absolute nightmare. So I have a very hard time even faintly disliking this one.

Meanwhile: great comment. It’s quite true: McLaren said things about noo atheists that were simply false, and several people (including me, and you) pointed them out, specifically. She’s never withdrawn them, much less apologized, and instead she just pitches another self-righteous fit. What a bizarro crew. Imagine if they become the Bosses Of All Atheism!

Well Stacy has it right and Karla is just plain wrong and boring. She accuses some recent authors of being only polemical (were there no atheists before these four?) and states that it is time to use dialectics. Exactly wrong. Dialectics is trying to arrive at an unknown truth by discussion. Here the truth is known. What is needed is confident assertion of that truth, with evidence, whenever, wherever and as often as needed.

Well Karla asserts that dialectics require polemics ‘or there wouldn’t be anything to synthesize’.

That’s the trouble with her piece, it’s synthetic. Non of it rings true. It is full of posy rhetoric to inflate her own ego and ingratiate her further into the ‘atheist movement’ that she so longs to lead towards the glorious sunlit upland of cultural acceptability. Possibly with her on a white horse, up front, with a halo.

It is a completely scrutable piece: evidence, fact and essentially content free sitting beneath a thin veneer of pseudo intellectual language while neither addressing nor answering any of the substantive challenges raised against the arguments she expressed in her earlier….er….polemic.

I’m glad you are still willing to fight this nonsense, but I’m too mad at Stedman to consider his opinions on anything after his siding with the religious bigots against gays in a Huffington Post article from May 11, 2011. He appears to excel at whitewashing discrimination.

Have read the actual post now, or at least three quarters of it. Ghah!

Soooooooooo frustrating.

I’ve always assumed that people (especially folks from the atheist movement, which trumpets freethought and individual responsibility) would instinctually understand that I don’t agree with every single word composed by the guest bloggers I host on NonProphet Status. However, I think assuming that may have been unfair on my part. It is clear to me now that this explicit sidebar statement is necessary: “The views expressed by NonProphet Status guest bloggers may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Chris Stedman or any of the organizations he affiliates with.”

As Ophelia rightly points out, you don’t need to put a disclaimer, and you don’t need to talk to people like they’re 5, you just need to not overtly and clearly condone, praise and co-sign a guest post. You did all of those things Chris, see quotes above from OB. It’s right there. I’m not being unfair or an idiot for assuming you agree in large part with what Karla says if you say what you said.

Well he said of McLaren’s guest post that it was a doozy, in a good way, and that it was “a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” Yes, I thought he pretty much agreed with it. If he doesn’t want us to think that, he could always refrain from lavishly praising the guest posts in his introductions.

Yes. Obviously. So obviously that it’s freakin scary. Ghah! I want to comment on more of Mclaren’s bit too, but I need another coffee, and maybe to walk the dog.

Second: If people have become so destabilized by the mere words of another, it is probably best to let them cool down and reflect privately. Inflaming the further anger of people who have shown that they can’t manage the anger they already have … that’s just cruel and baiting. It’s a sick-fun way to score points at the expense of all humanity, but humanity has been through a lot recently; it’s preferable to use anger without abusing or humiliating people.

Which may put me in this second category of Karla’s. But, you know, I’d call it justified frustration or exacerbation or something. And I’d call her attempt at seeming “above” all of the anger and being a peacemaker and such plain old condescending.

The problem with not naming names, or quoting quotes, is that it leads me to assume what she’s talking about, and outside of a couple of comments, I think she hints enough that her problem lies with some of the larger responses. That means Rieux. That means she is flagrantly ignoring substance.

David – I really hated that last passage you quoted – that condescending crap about letting us cool down and reflect privately, dropped from the enormously great height at which she dwells.

God I hate sanctimony. I hate it more than some worse things, probably – it grates on me more. I hate it when people make it very obvious that they think they’re super-good people, sent to Enlighten all the rest of us.

The truly “nice” people I’ve known didn’t/don’t do that. They don’t do anything even resembling that. They just are kind and unself-obsessed and easygoing. They just do it, they don’t tell you they’re doing it, they’d laugh if you told them they were doing it, they don’t lecture you about doing it, they don’t talk solemn bullshit about doing it, they don’t give themselves big hugs every ten seconds for doing it. Not one of them is remotely sanctimonious. Stedman and McLaren are steeped in sanctimony.

The whole thing seems to me to be a huge display of vanity and egotism. They want to be admired for being so christlike. It is ICKY.

Ah well – I’ve said this before. People who make no pretense of being Specially Nice are much much safer.

For atheists, these people sure seem to like reading from the religious playbook: misrepresenting their opponents, condescending to tell others how to behave, simultaneous blatant lies & denial & playing the fucking martyr card at every opportunity.

My question, however, is how to best go about mounting that opposition. I assert that free-range atheists attacking religious people is not the best way, and that it actually backfires horribly.

I agree that free-range atheists are not the best. When you let the atheists roam about free like that, their meat gets all tough and stringy. It is much better to keep them in battery cages so their flesh remains soft and plump and juicy. That prevents them from getting all uppity, too.

First, I want to express my appreciation to Rieux for great comments on this.

Steve LaBonne @ Pharyngula:

But what I simply don’t understand is, what is the source of the emotional energy behind the truly bizarre behavior of the Mooneyites? I mean, this epidemic of furious whining has long since gone way beyond anything that can be explained without invoking a significant degree of derangement. I find it absolutely baffling.

McLaren, quoted above:

(2) “atheists who aren’t offended by religion,

I can come up with, and have mentioned in the past, various plausible explanations or diagnoses that respond to Steve’s query.* What I cannot understand is how they can not be offended by religion. Daily, atheist blogs – of which they must read some – chronicle the attacks not just on science but on basic human rights from the religious and religious organizations. It’s unending, and it’s not just a tiny, inconsequential creationist sect. And yet this seems to float right past them. Reading blogs like Rosenau’s would give the impression that the greatest threat to science, ethics, and human well-being is…atheist evolutionary biologists. And when they see a religious organization denying the equality and basic humanity of a group, they’re offended by the critics of the religious organization. How warped does your sense of morality have to be for this to be your pattern of offense?

*(Though Ramsey, TB, and McCarthy appear to suffer from some bizarre pathology.)

I have no problem with people, for instance, saying that the Catholic Church must answer for its sacred tradition of supporting and protecting child molesters. I have no problem with people questioning whether any denomination can be considered holy [?!!!!!] if it promotes homophobia, racism, or misogyny. Absolutely, we must oppose institutions that promote brutality and ignorance.

My question, however, is how to best go about mounting that opposition.

You have no problem with it? Your question is how best to go about mounting opposition, while you’re evidently so unconcerned with actively opposing brutality and ignorance that you’re spending your time ignorantly criticizing the “manners” of those who are? Your ethics are broken, McLaren.

The truly “nice” people I’ve known didn’t/don’t do that. They don’t do anything even resembling that. They just are kind and unself-obsessed and easygoing. They just do it, they don’t tell you they’re doing it, they’d laugh if you told them they were doing it, they don’t lecture you about doing it, they don’t talk solemn bullshit about doing it, they don’t give themselves big hugs every ten seconds for doing it. Not one of them is remotely sanctimonious.

Thanks for this Ophelia. This is the bare truth. We are lucky if we know any such people.

What annoys me most about the faitheists is their hypocrisy. They complain that gnu atheists are trying to shut them up. I’ve seen, and even written, comments to faitheists telling them to either show some evidence that “you’re not helping” or stop their whining. But never once have I seen anyone tell them not to engage the goddists. On the other hand I’ve seen several faitheists* demand that gnu atheists not talk to anyone, faitheist or goddist.

If you want to play nice with the goddists then go for it. Just don’t tell me I can’t play rough with them. And don’t whine if I do.

*I will not embarrass Chris Mooney or Karla McLaren by mentioning any names.

The hypocrisy is truly mindblowing. If you’re going to castigate someone for acting like a jerk and harming “the cause”, the least you could do is threefold: actually show how that someone’s actions were jerky, show how that jerkiness negatively impacted “the cause” and (very, very importantly) avoid acting like a jerk yourself. Instead, we see bald assertions of “dickishness” backed up by no facts; no evidence that the purported dickishness led to any rejection of science or evolution and – the glaze on the cherry on the icing – endless fucking patronising condescension & arrogant finger-wagging, all spiced with occasional claims to martyrdom and moral superiority. If that’s not being a dick, then the word is meaningless.

So, quick & easy solution: if gnus are sooo damaging and sooo divisive, how about these self-appointed net-nannies of atheism do what they do best – whatever that’s supposed to be, I don’t actually give a shit – and leave the gnus alone? How about sticking to your own agenda and – as my mother would say – keeping your nose in your own plate? Stick to holding hands and singing Kum By fucking Ah with the cool youth pastors and see how the results compare to not compromising on matters of established fucking fact.

I suspect that my solution won’t be adopted, however. I obviously don’t have access to the stats of the accomodationist sites, but I have a strong suspicion that gnu rebuttals to their drivel give them a shitload of traffic they wouldn’t otherwise get.

After reading the comments, all I can say – that hasn’t been already said enough – is thank you, thank you, many times thank you Ophelia for continuing to expose and rip these moronic anti-“new” atheist arguments to shreds.

I think the shift away from accommodation is necessary because past efforts of secularists to accommodate religious people are being opening attacked. I’m thinking specifically of women’s reproductive rights, as well as homosexual civil rights, both of which the religious folks refuse to make any accommodations for themselves these days. Might as well be ‘game on’ then. The churches better make a hasty retreat back into the safety of church/state separation before it’s too late. I don’t expect they’ll be that lucid however, and the backlash I anticipate from the normally silent majority is going to come down hard on their ass. Somebody start the popcorn.

If I may indulge myself for a moment. When reading Karla’s blog I was suddenly struck with an image from Red Dwarf, when Rimmer becomes the uber lefty and advocates a vigorous letter writing campaign to stop a monster. Also, isn’t rage the catalyst for effective societal change? I am proud to be a confrontational Aethist! For too long have the kiddie fiddlers and drag queens of Christianity and its clones dominated humanity with their fear mongering. Let them now quake in terror, let them try to reason with the Fractious Four!

We have a right to be angry, it is the only way that we will get our opinion out there in the mainstream cattledrive that is public media. Only then can we begin to educate through shock tactics the drones of humanity.

How are we to trust people like McLaren know “nice” at all if they think their standards of “nice,” which they calibrate based on their own preferences, automatically apply to everyone. I don’t think it’s always important to be nice in the way other people want you to be nice, but at least I fucking know the difference between being nice on my own terms and being nice on someone else’s.

~*~*~*~*~*~

SC (#29)

Daily, atheist blogs – of which they must read some – chronicle the attacks not just on science but on basic human rights from the religious and religious organizations. … How warped does your sense of morality have to be for this to be your pattern of offense?

I’m afraid it’s even dumber than that. McLaren sez: “I deliberately chose to write about these uncivil behaviors as trends within the movement, rather than making examples of specific people. No one had directly offended against me, so why should I offend against anyone else?” Apparently chronicling is itself offensive.

“No one had directly offended against me, so why should I offend against anyone else?”

Apparently chronicling is itself offensive.

Of course it is, in the “worldview” of “nice” people and New Agey bullshitters. It’s all very Pomo, see. They get to “problematize” your “master narrative,” pointing out its “troubling” and “totalizing” assumptions. Which they must “unpack.” The requirement to specifically cite examples and sources is just another instantiation of the Western Gaze. That means it’s Bad.

It’s very simple, really. The accommodationists provide a service to the theists and the theistic establishment that funds them. When the bad old “new” atheists come around asking a lot of uncomfortable questions to which there are no comfy answers, the accommos tell them to STFU. It’s a protection racket, plain and simple.

Accomodationists are, unwittingly, providing a valuable service in the promotion of atheism.

The best analogy to their function is that recent story of the atheist group who paid for a bus to have the slogan “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone” painted on the side.

The bus attracted the ire of a christian group followed it in the street with another bus that had a “Jesus Loves You” type slogan on its side.

The end result of this was that TV companies and newspapers picked up the story of the stalking bus and the original outlay of expense for a small number of bus posters ended up reaching a far wider audience.

The same thing is happening with the accomodationist stalking of gnus. Go to the Guardian ‘Belief’ section, HuffPo religion section, Washington Post ‘On Faith’ section. Almost all of them constantly run stories written by accomodationists about the terrible gnus. There are similar stories on CNN, on Fox, on many other media channels.

The end result is that the accomodationists, in their eagerness to ‘other’ the gnus, have had the opposite effect. The gnus arguments have been criticised so much that people in society are beginning to look deeper. Try looking at any typical religious piece in a major media website, one that allows comments.

What do the comments say? I’ll wager that a fair few of them reflect back the standard arguments of the gnus – “what is the evidence for that?”, “how do you know that?”, “If God is unknowable, then how can you tell us you know what He wants?” “Its all a flippin’ fairy story” “It’s Santa Claus for adults”

And this, of course, drives more religious whinery. And more atheist reaction demanding evidence. And so on, with the end result of driving the gnus argument into the mainstream.

It has taken the advent of the internet and social media to allow for this as the internet is the perfect environment for gnu tactics to work. We have no worries about a ‘multiple approach’ because we are confident that our idea is the strongest.

So Karla and Chris, please write more stories. Get Karla onto HuffPo or even the Guardian and together we can keep up the good work.

This is a five, ten, or twenty year plan that requires long-range strategizing. Here’s the trouble: the abusive and dehumanizing behaviors that are becoming commonplace in sectors of atheism threaten that plan – or any plan.

We’re WRECKERS! First the dialectic and now this. Put down the Stalin, Karla.

“Surely the whole point about being rude and abrasive is that it gets you noticed.”

I don’t think that is the point. A lot of the criticism is not for comments that are particularly rude or abrasive. That is why there is an extreme reluctance from the accomodationists to provide examples. There is the implication that the gnus are doing things that the accomodationists and all right thinking folk would never do – such as using insulting language. Yet it is simple to find examples of accomodationists using similar language. Just yesterday I listened to the Point of Inquiry podcast and heard Chris Mooney describing some people who believed differently to him (not malicious or militant people) as “idiots”. OK, he was talking about truthers and birthers and I tend to agree that they are idiots – but it shows it isn’t simply about language.

My question, however, is how to best go about mounting that opposition. I assert that free-range atheists attacking religious people is not the best way, and that it actually backfires horribly.

Where is the evidence that this sel-righteous, whining, sniveling, craven and dishonest crap works?

Where?

Because I have a study from the 90s that says that people with strong convictions respond best to strong (as in strongly expressed/held) opposing arguments and that weak arguments only make people with strong convictions irritated and shut down.

And while they’re at it, they can explain why they refuse to recognize what history tells us about the struggles of every movement seeking equality in history. Black people didn’t get civil rights by being nice. They got it by being “uppity” and doing things that were considered rude in their day, like refusing to give seats on buses to white people, or sitting down at lunch counters that refused to serve them, but staying anyway. Women, who had spent millennia appeasing powerful men for any scraps of dignity they could, didn’t get the vote or greater rights by being nice–they were “shrill” and did rude things, like chain themselves to the gates of power (literally) and demanding their rights. LGBTs have made incredible strides–because they did rude things and were uppity–and that got results.

Everything in history tells us that “uppity” works. Why don’t these morons get the message?

Oh. Right. It serves them not to get the message. There’s all that Templeton money to whore for.

<i>“Surely the whole point about being rude and abrasive is that it gets you noticed.”</i>

Being considered rude and being rude are two very different things that these Uncle Tom accommodationists fudge all the time. Are the gnus rude, really?

Rosa Parks was considered rude in her day for not giving her seat to a white passenger. But was she really rude? Or was the person demanding that seat rude, for thinking he or she deserved it, simply for having a certain skin color?

The only reason a Richard Dawkins is considered rude is because he challenges the idea that religion is exempt from criticism (refuses to give up his seat), and then he merrily goes about criticism to prove that they aren’t exempt from it, in the least. How dare he criticize what can’t be criticized (how dare he not acknowledge religion’s privilege!) But he himself is not actually rude. Listen to him. Read him. He’s almost unfailingly polite as can be, genteel, even.

Daniel Dennett isn’t remotely rude. If any word would describe him at this stage of his live, it’s avuncular!

Sam Harris is consistently calm and reasonable in his writing and his public appearances. That’s rude?

Hitchens is the only one who has sometimes taken on the role of provocateur–but that’s exactly what he’s wanted to be. This is a guy who made a living attacking sacred cows as a writer. He has been in the trenches of talk shows and the like in America, duking it out, for over a decade. He knows what works with audiences in America, since he isn’t a stupid man. Being provocative definitely served him well in his career. But even he, for the most part, was quite polite in most situations.

i don’t think any of them are rude, or rude all that often. I just think that Dawkins is right: Religionists have it in their head that they are exempt from criticism (deserve the seat on the bus), and they’ve convinced a lot of otherwise smart people that this is so (give whitey his seat, where are your manners!).

I imagine her alone in her bunker moving non-existent battalions around a map while shouting out orders to no one in particular. Telling the rest of us how ‘were not helping’ and were letting her strategy down. All this while the battle has moved on and up to another level:-)

We need some dissent! This whole thread is way too unanimous. We need some contrarian person to come along and say why McLaren has a good point.

Well let’s see, why don’t I give it a shot.

………….No, it won’t work. I can easily think of assertions and jibes, but what I can’t do is think of the substantive bit that needs to follow. I can’t take it from McLaren because of course she didn’t provide it, and I’m not going to go around cherry-picking bits of gnu rudeness to use as evidence for what’s supposed to be pervasive. So it’s a non-starter.

I could just assert that gnu irritability repels everyone and attracts no one, but that’s simply ludicrous – it’s contrary to the obvious facts.

Ophelia, try provoking the gnus and then using their responses as “evidence” that they are fractious polemical people who are hurting some cause. (Don’t worry about providing any real evidence– it’s “trivially obvious”. Everyone knows about the gnu atheists and the way they shout forced laughter.)

You know what? It takes one to know one. I know I’m a rude, contentious, argumentative asshole… looking at Chris Stedman and Karla McLaren is like looking into a mirror. The difference is that I’m honest about it, and I don’t dress myself up in a phony, obnoxious “more in sorrow than anger” sanctimonious mask. Well, no. The real difference is that I direct my bile at deserving targets like raping Catholic priests and their enablers, homophobes and racists and sexist bigots, and American Idol fans. Stedman and McLaren seem to believe that all of those real problems would just go away if we would just be more polite in our criticism of child rapists and anti-abortion terrorists and such. Of course, in my view ultimately Stedman and McLaren are enemies of all possible atheists “movements” because their real goal seems to be to preserve and promote the status quo, while making just enough room for themselves to cozy up to the people in charge for their own selfish and narcissistic goals.

I stopped reading the article several times because I had such an avertion to reading it. And so, in an effort to be charitable, I gave it one last go.

Initially, the post begins by Stedman ‘framing’ (incorrectly) gnu atheism as only polemic rhetoric (Dennett does not fit within this strawman fallacy and so presents an inconvient refutation with Stedman’s initial premise.)

Then, Stedman makes the case that some comments (presumably the ones he disagrees with) ought to be read as if the intention of the commentator is attempting to make truth arguments.

I can only assume that Stedman is being passive-aggressive here, and then being ironic, because he fails to practice what he is preaching. Preaching to people who you disagree with will lead to accusations of self-importance and assumed authority over them, while failing to practice what you’re preaching will lead to accusations of hypocrisy.

But all this seems like an excuse for a bit of censorship in future articles, you have been warned. Not that I have any interest whatsoever in posting comments on Stedman’s blog.

Then still more ‘justifications’ for why Stedman is a true atheist with all his good work (she doth protest too much?). Now I personally have no problem with Stedman being an atheist, I just don’t think he’s a rational atheist, and I think he’s doing more harm than good by criticising criticisms against religion made by other atheists. I also have no problem with criticisms against atheists, and I do it regularly myself, but I don’t believe Stedman makes any rational criticisms, and his apologetics for religion only tells me that his atheism is not about personal conviction or truth.

Stedman then continues with his assumption of authority by giving (yet another) guest post to McLaren, calling it fair, then telling commentators how they ought to post. As you may sense, I’m beginning to lose patience already.

Now onto Mclaren’s post, which has the same air of assumed authority in dictating how those who disagree ‘ought’ to write.

There is one somewhat baffling assumption that McLaren makes in her reply: that she is the civil one. In fact, McLaren makes an awful lot of assumptions, which then become unreasoned assertions that ultimately make up her opinions.

Let me say this: It’s not polite by hiding behind passive-aggressive niceness. In fact, it’s extremely irritating and annoying. You can say one thing, while your body language, motives, emotions and facial expressions say the complete opposite. What it is, though, is fake, rude, intolerance disguised as civility. Civility requires restraint and respect, it is not a way to acquire restraint or respect, and in a sense both McClaren and Stedman seem to reverse the very point of civility.

“I deliberately chose to write about these uncivil behaviours as trends within the movement, rather than making examples of specific people.”

Then I guess, the premise to her piece is based on opinion and not evidence.

“It was an anger that involved direct slander against me, personal attacks against Chris Stedman (for daring to give me a public forum), and repetitive attempts to silence me, dehumanize me, and control my intellectual output and my voice.”

What intellectual output? Once again opinion based on no evidence, no examples, only a passive-aggressive pity party. This is not a way to make rational arguments, and will only further alienate sceptics who disagree with you.

McClaren then attempts to ‘justify’ her lack of reasoned arguments by the following excuses:

“First: Making examples of offending individuals can only seem paternalistic or schoolmarmish”

No, you’re already being schoolmarmish, what you’re doing is failing to build a rational argument by not giving examples.

“Second: If people have become so destabilized by the mere words of another, it is probably best to let them cool down and reflect privately. Inflaming the further anger of people who have shown that they can’t manage te anger they already have.”

Very clearly passive-aggressive and just as inflamatory.

“Third: Getting specific about a behavior that is generalized will take our eyes off the prize.”

But a generalization without specifics is an opinion, or an assumption, and not a truth or rational argument. When that opinion becomes the premise of a passive-aggressive tirade against a group of people making important criticisms against religious privilege, then you’re going to attract bitter disagreement and likewise the same hostility that you delivered in the first place.

And this is the problem: McLaren holds up her hands in astonishment at all the terrible abusive anger directed towards her poor, innocent, blameless self; without ever understanding that she is the cause of that anger or hostility. It’s a classic symptom of a psychological disorder, and has no place in sceptical opinion.

“Religion and supernaturalism are the only support structures that exist for a heartbreakingly large portion of humanity”

This is another assumption, but a commonly held one that probably most atheists will actually agree with. However, I think it’s an assumption that deserves to be challenged. Rather, I would say that religion and supernaturalism actually do the opposite of providing a support structure, they actually increase suffering and alienate people from healthy support structures. However, that is an argument for another time.

In conclusion, why do these posts drive me up the wall so much? It’s because they’re no different to the posts of a believer. Atheists can be believers too, and sheepish followers. Atheists can be ignorant and foolish, and intellectually vacant. I hold nothing in common with such people, any more than I hold anything in common with religious believers. I find both equally lacking in content, and they do indeed having everything common with each other, and nothing in common with rational sceptics.

Now I feel no better about myself after wasting my time reading McClaren’s desperate article, I need a shower…

The comment is just off the rails in so many ways. “YOU ARE A LIAR, A WHINER AND A MANIPULATOR.” (Caps in original.) Really? Seriously — really? There’s no sense walking through the whole comment to explain its absurdity. If that’s not already obvious then I cannot help.

Of course, Aquaria does not speak for New Atheism. And that’s the problem. When Aquaria-ish comments frequently appear in New Atheist blogs, they give a certain impression. It’s not a good one.

If someone IS a “liar, a whiner and a hypocrite” then what’s more negative? The lying, whining, and hypocrisy? Or someone pointing it out? If you believe that pointing out negative but true things is worse than being guilty of those things, then I’m not sure what sort of principles you hold, but they seem alien to me.

If it has nothing to do with New Atheism then it’s not a gripe with New Atheism! By definition.

That said, I know what you mean, of course, but as you indicate, it’s not specific to new atheism, it’s specific to the internet. (Mind you, despite knowing what you mean, I don’t actually think the comment is wrong. I think it’s unhelpful in form, but I think at least the second two accusations are fair and even the first one is close – McLaren simply has said some things about “the fractious four” that are untrue. She even said Dennett didn’t belong among the four but then made untrue accusations against all four anyway. She is not at all careful to tell the truth about people she dislikes.)

@64: are you saying that Aquaria’s comment was not true, or merely that you do not think it should have been said? Either you, if you didn’t want to read that sort of thing, don’t read this blog. Your choice.

“We need some dissent! This whole thread is way too unanimous. We need some contrarian person to come along and say why McLaren has a good point”

Usually I’m happy to oblige but in this case I do not think she has made a strong argument at all, nor do I think the responses here have been reasonable – in fact they have generally been very civil and extremely smart.

I say generally because there are a couple of comments by Aquaria which are not civil, and I think provide McLaren precisely the ammunition she needs to make these sorts of claims. Let me give examples, because I think that’s only fair. Here, Aquaria, you say “Being considered rude and being rude are two very different things”. I agree. Here are things that I think are in fact rude:

You call McLaren’s work (and by implication the work of other ‘accomodationists’) “self-righteous, whining, sniveling, craven and dishonest crap”. Self-righteous and whining is fair game, in my view. Sniveling, craven and dishonest, less so. I don’t see demonstrated evidence of an attempt to deceive or of a lack of courage. Even if your accusations are accurate, “sniveling” is certainly rude.

You call accomodationists “morons” and suggest they might want to “whore for” money from the Templeton Foundation. This is rude.

In response to McLaren’s article on NonProphetStatus you call her a “liar, a whiner and a passive-aggressive control freak”. You call her “YOU ARE A LIAR, A WHINER AND A MANIPULATOR.” – the caps are original. And you wonder whether she is “pathologically mendacious”. This is rude.

My only point here is to say that if you do not wish new atheists to be characterized as rude, then it would be wise not to be so rude. I am not saying that I disagree with your assessment of the piece (although I refrain from making an assessment of it’s author), nor am I saying that rudeness isn’t justified – some of my own posts are very rude. But I do in this case take exception to your tone, which I read as unwarrantedly aggressive, nastily personal, unnecessary, self-defeating and counter-productive.

@70: but Aquaria’s “are the Gnus rude” comment discusses the public personae of the Four Horsemen, and concludes that they are not on balance rude. I don’t think Aquaria has ever claimed to not be joyfully rude.

This is probably a gnot gnice thing to bring up, but what impresses me about MacLaren and Stedman is that they are neither of them very intelligent people, and so, when faced with intelligent rebuttals of their ill-thought-out opinions, they have no recourse but to retreat into mere complaining mode.

And she’s making claims about her empathy and skill at reading people, a quality that she very clearly lacks when it comes to people who she disagrees with. Yikes.

That’s because cold-reading isn’t so much about perception on the reader’s part; it’s about manipulating people into accepting that you’re a better authority on who they are than they are. It’s easy to be perceptive and empathetic when people want you to tell them who they are.

Let’s draw a line, then. If you actually believe Ms McLauren is lying, or if you have no problem with others publicly accusing her of such, then you are one kind of atheist. If you think that’s completely fucked up then you are another kind of atheist.

Yes, Mooneytits is sexist; decidedly. I don’t much want to be called Tits, frankly, so I don’t see why any other woman should be called it merely because she’s a woman.

James’s comment is fair. I can’t be too censorious on this subject, because I call the Vatican harsh names on a regular basis, and other people and institutions too. But harsh names are best used sparingly, and in some proportion to the crimes. I find McLaren deeply exasperating, but it is after all only a blog post.

There’s really only one kind of atheist: I think there are different kinds of people, and I only respect some of them. The ones who tell the truth I respect. The ones who lie, or protect liars in the names of civility, not so much.

@Joe #65: I just went back to check who said what in the original mclaren comments section.

As soon as Karla McLaren returns the money she stole from people as a “New Age Healer” con artist, she can be taken seriously on other matters. Until then, she’s a thief and a fraud.

It was you. Now, FYI, that is in no way ment to be accusatory. Hopefully that’ll become obvious.

Maybe she can’t stop; maybe it’s displacement behavior. Maybe she’s tormented by guilt for all the damage she did as a “New Age healer” in the past, and attacking gnus takes her mind off it.

Ophelia said the above.

Now, what would usually follow is a spiel about tone, and undermining your own arguments with rudeness, or giving mclaren a negative to focus on, an excuse to ignore the substance.

To be honest, I think that’s crap. When someone says something that’s not part of a formal argument, or calls someone a name, it seems to me that ALL of the blame then gets shifted to them. I say no to that. Certainly in this case. If we want to talk about etiquette and the like, then I think the onus is on both sides to go some way to looking at any substance that is there, despite whatever “personal” or “confrontational” language is used. This goes doubly when it’s multiple commentors. mclaren and stedman don’t get to ignore the substance from many posters because some others threw in a few quips. It’s pathetic. Harden the F up. It stops constructive and practical discussion dead, and it’s just not true that it’s automatically the fault of the person who gets heated.

Lets suppose rieux or Hitch, for instance, finished one of their long posts with “you morons.” It may be true that it’s not strictly the best bit of communication blah blah etc etc, but I’m sorry, it’s not fair dealing by the person being called the name to completely ignore large sections of clearly defined and explained arguments because of a few words.

79 – nah. That’s a ridiculous place to draw a line. McLaren has said some things that aren’t true, including at least one that, as I said, she knows isn’t true – she said herself that Dennett doesn’t fit with the “fractious four” but she went right ahead and attributed their putative crimes to all four anyway. That’s less than honest. I’m leery of the word “lying,” partly because of my experience with Tim Broderick repeatedly accusing me of lying merely because I asked Mooney and Kirshenbaum a list of questions about their book – but that doesn’t make your suggested place to draw the line a good one.

I laughed at “Mooneytits” when I read it , then caught myself – Mooney was originally associated with Sheril Kirshenbaum and I guess it is legitimate to think that the latter half refers to her. Im not sure why tits means “dumb” (which is what I believe the term is used for ) but it sounds sexist.

Oh, and I ment to add, I wonder, again, how this flare up will be described during the next flare up. A couple of months from now, stedman or mclaren will write another piece, as is the way of blogs, and there will be a summary of what’s gone before. This is frequently where we discover what’s become the “take home message” from the last round.

Anyone wanna take bets that it’ll be “a couple of months ago, some Gnus were really mean to me?”

So is “Mooneytits” half-sexist? LOL, I’m thinking “tits” is too loaded to be safely used towards anyone, just to be safe. I’m against it, regardless of the target.

@David M: I’m just being lazy at this point and don’t feel like elaborating, but my issue with McLaren is that she’s a fraud twice over. She cheated people as a New Age nonsense peddler. Then when she decided it was nonsense, she switched to being a “natural empath” in order to claim that her magic powers were still real, just a little less New Age-y. That sort of fraud touches a nerve, and I tend to get rather ticked off.

I didn’t assume any attack on me from your end, and probably wouldn’t care too much if it was an attack. I’m sort of cool with my stances these days, or when I screw up I have no problem accepting it (the whole “teats” thing).

David M, oh don’t worry, it’s already being described – at Facebook, yawn. Yes it’s all about how mean people are. No names, no groups, just a thing about how mean people are. But the commenters are putting 2 and 6 together and coming up with PZ.

I don’t think the “tits” in Mooneytits stands for dumb – I think it’s worse than that; I think it means Mooney and some woman or other. Just total dismissal, because she’s a woman. A person, with a name, and some thing with tits.

It’s enough to make me want to go and set up a new faction with Kirshenbaum. :- )

I wish people would put 2 and 6 and all the other numbers together, and come up with me. My blog is possibly the most spectacularly unpopular blog on the Internet. I post cat pictures and everything, and I still get no love! :)

I think – though I’m not sure and could be wrong – that “Mooneytits” was originally coined at ERV back in 2009, by Abbie or Sili, and that it was initially (or at least in the earlier uses I saw, but they might not have been the first) “Mooneytits and Cockenbaum,” suggesting I suppose their interchangeability. It seems it’s changed over time given that she’s independently mentioned so infrequently and some people are likely to read/write it as referring to the pair.

Dare I say its the right way of doing things? (Or maybe the Bright way, lols.)

Either way, I certainly see much to commend having a fairly thick skin. Part of having a thick skin, is being able to be honest enough with yourself to think you could be flat out wrong about things. part of it is not getting so antsy when people are supposedly mean to you, and actually recognising that a lot of the time, all it is s simple disagreement. I’ve done my share of creative writing in my time, and on occasion the odd writing course/subject, and the best discussions and most useful criticisms in the workshops have ALWAYS come from those who were honest and confident enough to just call a spade a spade. Inenvitably, the people who struggled along and just tried to be nice, or didn’t want to shatter other writers, ended up letting them get away with BAD WRITING.

I dunno, I guess there’s two things that I’d say are “take home” messages:

Nice isn’t the be all and end all.

And honesty, sometimes brutal honesty, is an underrated attribute.

Having said all that, the other thing that strikes me is that it needs to be pointed out that it’s not a case of WANTING to be mean, or confrontational, or rude, or to disagree, certainly for me, and I assume for most here. I like a lot of people, I like getting along with people, I like to think I’m a nice enough guy, but playing nice to the point where you let clearly contradictory ideas take equal footing is taking nice too far.

I recall having a chat with one of my best friends a while back about God and religion (she’s “spiritual,” yeah, that’ll do for short hand) and it got to the point where she wouldn’t agree that we were disagreeing about some things! I was like, “It’s ok, we disagree.” And she was all, “no, no, I get what you’re saying.” And trying to frame it as agreement with differences over nuance. It was almost as if it was fear – if we actually completely disagree about something then is the friendship in trouble? My answer is a clear no, the friendship is fine. We can disagree. Is it so hard to admit?

She has taken to apologising whenever she says “Thank God” around me now, which is also a little disconcerting.

Yes except they have good teeth! They have the gleaming white teeth of youth. Not quite Obama teeth or Diana teeth, but pretty good teeth. I have tiny green teeth; they’re disgusting. I look like a rat. Call me Ratso!

Lets suppose rieux or Hitch, for instance, finished one of their long posts with “you morons.” It may be true that it’s not strictly the best bit of communication blah blah etc etc, but I’m sorry, it’s not fair dealing by the person being called the name to completely ignore large sections of clearly defined and explained arguments because of a few words.

I strongly agree, but I hope no one has the notion that my work is the epitome of insult-free advocacy. I certainly do try to put as much substance into my comments as I can, but there are sometimes unkind assertions in there as well.

And, sure, that leaves my points vulnerable to facile dismissal by opponents who fixate on the couple of naughty/mean words and thereby ignore the (according to me) cogent argument behind them. It’s the same-old-same-old trade-off.

McLaren was being civil, in her way. That’s because — assuming that ‘civility’ has any moral worth, and that it means anything — it just means, “don’t be unreasonable; and if you are unreasonable, you should certainly not be an asshole”.

Seems to me that McLaren was being unreasonable, because neither she (nor Stedman) seem to have a coherent idea about what it means to be “uncivil”, or a clear plan on how to use that concept. But while that’s a failure, I don’t think she was being an asshole — “asshole” meaning, roughly, somebody who goes out of their way of be offensive for its own sake. Quite the opposite, she’s bending over backwards to be politically correct, even to the point of refusing to naming the names of her supposed abusers.

It’s not always uncivil to be sanctimonious, hectoring, annoying, condescending, or any of that. e.g., Condescension is sometimes warranted. Sure, condescension might indicate that the person you’re listening to or reading is a pretentious, unreasonable asshole (cf. Thomas Friedman). But it might also indicate that that person believes that their audience is behaving in an unreasonable way.

So it’s too bad that she won’t tell us who she is critiquing — we can’t tell what’s going on. Though she does give a hint. She’s opening a can of “whuppass” on the tertiary atheists, while “saluting” the primaries and “questioning” the secondaries. And if by “tertiaries” she means “Various and sundry obnoxious anonymous commenters on the internet”, then she has a gratuitous point. It’s the internet. Trolling is what it’s for.

So anyway, that was my lame attempt at dissent.

The important thing, for me, is that McLaren was behaving unreasonably. She behaves as though she thinks that the very important matter of equity is the very same thing as the project of inclusiveness. Equity means recognizing that people have some kind of disparities, and that these obstacles need you to behave differently in order to give these people the things that they’re entitled to. Unqualified inclusiveness means including as many people as possible, by putting up with bullshit that people create for themselves. Or, in other words — equity means balancing your heart with your head. Inclusivity means being pointlessly permissive.

She might not think this is a correct way of describing her views and actions. But it is a justifiable way of describing how she’s behaving. How else are we to explain the fact that she includes “polemics” in the same category as “uncivil” — and then characterize incivility by its reliance on “abuse, slander, and dehumanization”? As I’m sure others have noted, it seemingly demonstrates a clumsy idea of what “civility” is.

She has taken to apologising whenever she says “Thank God” around me now, which is also a little disconcerting.

Uggh, that reminds of how, a few weeks ago, my mother was sharing an excerpt from a (non-fiction) book that involved a woman taking her dog to a pet psychic. She prefaced that bit with an apology about how she knew I wasn’t going to like the next part of the story. As if I would somehow be offended that it involved someone doing something irrational or as if I would judge her for liking such a story.

Something important to note, that I don’t think has been mentioned, is that we’re certainly not engaging in any sort of double standards here. We outspoken Gnus can be lots of things, but one thing we aren’t is hypocrites; we sure as hell disagree with each other as openly and often as harshly as we do with theists/faitheists that we disagree with. We also don’t tend to use weasel words and take sanctimonious positions when disagreeing. I’ve seen most of the atheist bloggers I follow disagree with each other at least once, and you never see them take on the sort of phony tone of a Stedman or McLaren when they do it.

The other things is that unlike those phony frauds, when someone criticizes us you don’t see us act all butt-hurt over it. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I value a whole lot of stuff more than I do the fake civility of the accommodationists. Hey, I said something that Ophelia found to be sexist. She stated it outright and without any bullshit softening that it was sexist, and didn’t worry about my goddamned feelings. I didn’t automatically go on the defensive and start making up nonsense rationalizations about why it should be OK, or whine that she was being a great big meanie for calling me sexist. Even if I’d disagreed with her (which I don’t, I totally like “Mooney-toons” more, since it is more clever than slapping secondary sexual characteristics on the back of someone’s name… sexism is a lot of things, including stupidly lazy), I’m sure we’d have found a way to deal with it without long posts bemoaning each others’ tone.

79 – nah. That’s a ridiculous place to draw a line. McLaren has said some things that aren’t true, including at least one that, as I said, she knows isn’t true – she said herself that Dennett doesn’t fit with the “fractious four” but she went right ahead and attributed their putative crimes to all four anyway. That’s less than honest. I’m leery of the word “lying,” partly because of my experience with Tim Broderick repeatedly accusing me of lying merely because I asked Mooney and Kirshenbaum a list of questions about their book – but that doesn’t make your suggested place to draw the line a good one.

I’m leery of the word lying also, and even more leery of calling someone a liar, but there is a point where if untruths are being spoken, then the actions can accurately be called lying. We’re wary of using the term liar, I think, because it implies motivated, deliberate action, and that somehow that person IS something. It doesn’t mean that it’s not accurate on occasion.

Ophelia’s example is a good one. mclaren admits that Dennett doesn’t fit her idea of the fractious 4, and you could make a pretty good case that her descriptions don’t even fit the other three anyway. Discussions of tone and personal preference as far as how people are putting themselves forward might seem like the sort of thing we can call subjective, to a point, but surely taking this subjectivism to the point where descriptors become completely meaningless is self defeating?

‘Tits’ is in reference to Casey Luskins nickname on ERV, ‘Caseytits’, due to his reaction to a 4chan demotivational image of Darth Vader telling Princess Leia “TITS or GTFO!”

When I posted that in response to a Creationist (ie post your evidence or get off my blog), Casey took a screen-cap and tried to paint the picture in his real-life presentations that ‘ERV’ was 1) a male and 2) literally asking a Creationist to post pictures of b00bs in exchange for being allowed to post on ERV (evidence of how immoral Evilutionists are). Things got funny when I was actually in the audience.

Thus, he is “Caseytits”.

Thus, since Mooneys behavior is indistinguishable from Luskins, he gets a cloned nickname, “Mooneytits”.

Since the topic at hand was a book written by Mooneytits and Sheril Kirshenbaum, it would have been sexist to slight her involvement in the fiasco by not including her in the joke, thus she got a negative reciprocal nickname “Cockenbaum”.

Old joke is old, and part of the standard lexicon for commentors at ERV. It will remain a standard name for Chris Mooney on my blog until he reforms his behavior to be less Luskin-like, and I dont see that happening in the future. I apologize for the inside-joke run-off, but the joke was used appropriately.

MBurnet, I don’t think anybody here only hinted that she was lying. To me, and quite rightly so IMO, they were stating it explicitly, e.g. Ophelia’s comment about what McLaren said about Dennett. Of course it could be that McLaren is simply too stupid to see the contradiction rather than out and out intending to lie. But why should it be up to us to dechypher poor communication. Ironically, something all too common in so many of the communication attempts of these ‘communication’ experts.

Not for nothing, but the squeamishness that people have about calling people liars is one of the things that allows liars to keep on lying with impunity. One of the advances of the Gnu atheists is that they’re not afraid to call out liars, and in only 10-20 years, maybe the rest of society will catch up and stop putting civility ahead of demanding honesty.

This was in the context of Aquaria’s contention that McLaren is lying. It’s fair to ask if others agree, and if someone half answers it’s fair to request clarification, I think. They did hint–see the numbered comments I gave–which I why I followed up.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I certainly have accused McLaren of lying. And not just hinted at it.

I also think that, in my comments on NonProphet Status (particularly in my April 28 comment on McLaren’s initial NPS post), I’ve provided ample support for my accusation. To wit:

This article [McLaren’s April 26 post, “Why Do We Need New Atheists? Can’t We Just Spruce Up The Old Ones?”] amounts to a series of ludicrous and offensive misrepresentations—of the “Fractious Four” (what an insulting sobriquet), of their books, of the current state of Gnu Atheism, and of the preening superiority of Ms. McLaren’s supposed approach to “creat[ing] a workable, inclusive community” among atheists. I have a hard time understanding how anyone with an actual interest in creating such a community could write such a demeaning and inaccurate attack on people who deserve none of the bile served to them here.

As an initial matter, the notion that the “Fractious Four”‘s work uniformly consists of “deeply emotional appeal[s] made not just with anger, but with rage” is an absurd falsehood. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is no polemic, as McLaren concedes (making her decision to include Dennett in her “Fractious Four” insult hard to fathom); meanwhile, Harris’s The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation bear no resemblance to the “rage”y description—and the notion that Dawkins’ The God Delusion is an “emotional appeal made not just with anger, but with rage” is a damnable lie. Only Hitchens’ god is not Great contains an ounce of the animus that McLaren pretends suffuses the writing of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris alike. (The idea that God Delusion or End of Faith “put th[eir] ideas forward at the end of a fist, and in a way that questions the sanity and morality of anyone who disagrees with them” is yet another offensive falsehood.)

Shame on McLaren for so thoroughly misrepresenting the nature of the works she attacks.

Second, McLaren’s account of Gnus’ criticism of accommodationists like Stedman is, once again, woefully dishonest. Statements like “atheists who aren’t offended by religion, or who actively work to understand and communicate with religious people, are branded pejoratively as ‘accommodationists’” is a brutal falsehood. The actual critique of accommodationism from “The Four,” as well as from P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne, Ophelia Benson and many other Gnus, has nothing to do with anyone failing to be “offended by religion, or … actively work[ing] to understand and communicate with religious people.” No honest reporter of the disagreements between Gnus and accommodationists could possibly publish such an absurd synopsis of the Gnu critique; it would appear that McLaren hasn’t the slightest idea of what that critique actually is.

Finally, the arrogant presumption that Gnus, unlike the superior McLaren and Stedman, are incapable of community building is belied by the huge and burgeoning real-life Gnu-ish communities that exist and that are growing all over the atheist world. We who are not restricted by McLaren’s myopia, in which there is nothing to Gnu Atheism other than “rage”y polemic, find community in innumerable local and national nontheist organizations, in addition to Pharyngula and richarddawkins.net and Why Evolution is True and Butterflies and Wheels and Daylight Atheism and Evolutionblog and Greta Christina’s Blog and Friendly Atheist and a hundred other smaller haunts. McLaren’s ignorance of every aspect of Gnu Atheism besides the “polemic” she pretends that Gnus’ ordinary criticism of religion constitutes simply blinds her to the overwhelming reality of the very real Gnu community that exists right now.

McLaren, like so many accommodationists, has distinguished herself by publishing harsh, unsupported, and dishonest attacks directed at atheists. How anyone so disinterested in painting an honest picture of who we are, what we believe, and what we do thinks that she can retain the credibility to build a community that includes thousands of atheists she has just smeared escapes me.

As McLaren notes, there are proper uses for outrage and polemic. One such use is to express the proper opprobrium toward dishonest attacks on innocent people. Shame on you, Ms. McLaren.

In that comment I accuse McLaren of misrepresentations, falsehoods, dishonesty, and lies several times. I stand by every one.

I don’t want it to seem like I’m raging on you, but I did have sufficient respect for your arguments to actually read the research article you linked. You said:

“I have a study from the 90s that says that people with strong convictions respond best to strong (as in strongly expressed/held) opposing arguments and that weak arguments only make people with strong convictions irritated and shut down.”

It says nothing of the sort. The distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ arguments in the article is not between arguments which are “strongly expressed/held” and those which are expressed or held weakly. The researchers carefully lay out their methodology on p. 938, saying:

“we defined message quality primarily in terms of how worthy the arguments were of serious consideration and how difficult the arguments were to counterargue”.

In other words, the study showed that what most would call ‘good’ arguments were better than ‘bad’ ones at persuading people. The results have no bearing on the question of whether the strength with which an argument is expressed makes any difference.

I submit that if McLaren had misrepresented the results of a scientific study in such an elementary way you would take the opportunity to call her a liar. I will assume you made an error.

Oh dear – I’m very sorry. Somehow in my head, that phrase always conjures up images not of gay men, but of a type of wishy-washy person in the general sense. Obviously, though, it’s too easy for it to also be a stereotypical slur, and I should have remembered that what goes on in Josh’s head is not universal. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m gay too, James, and will have no truck with homophobic bullshit. I’m sincere when I say it just didn’t occur to me because I have an idiosyncratic idea about the word.

Thanks for calling me out on that. It’s good to be reminded that it’s important to be careful with words. What one intends is not what readers will always infer, and I’m cringing that my post looks like it supports something so ugly. Sigh.

In the spirit of invited dissent, I have to admit that I am sort of puzzled by some parts of Rieux’s list.

Rieux thinks that it is a lie for McLaren to say that Dawkins and company have certain ragey feelings and expressions towards religion. So what do we do when Dawkins in TGD says that, “As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise”? Hostile means hostile. It’s not slander or dishonest to take the man’s self-reports at his word. And I think we should recognize the feeling and manner of expression, note it, and move on. (That’s what I’m motivated to do, at any rate, since I have more respect for people who are willing to say, “Hi religion, you piss me off, here’s a book explaining why”, then those who would categorically shrink from any mention of ill-will.)

That said, I do agree that the critique of the accommodationists that she offered is naive, at best. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a lie. Not everyone knows about the Tom Johnson Affair, for instance.

I already mentioned this in #107, but since it popped up again (though I can’t be sure it was in reference to what I said), I will restate it.

I’m all for calling liars liars. That’s not relevant to my point. It seems people are inclined to see “tone” arguments here. This isn’t a tone argument.

What interests me is whether the inference that McLaren is lying is reasonable. How one chooses to respond if that is established is an entirely independent matter.

I do believe this is a good litmus test. If you think McLaren is lying, or if you have no problem with someone publicly accusing her of lying, then you are one type. If you think it’s fucked up to conclude that McLaren is lying then you are another type.

I do believe this is a good litmus test. If you think McLaren is lying, or if you have no problem with someone publicly accusing her of lying, then you are one type. If you think it’s fucked up to conclude that McLaren is lying then you are another type.

That’s extaordinarily . . . vague and unhelpful:

1. Do you mean that it’s just the same thing to think Mclaren is lying as it is to publicly accuse her of lying? If so, why? That doesn’t make sense to me.

2. What is the difference between someone who a) thinks McLaren is lying and b) someone who concludes McLaren is lying?

3. Given that, what possible difference could it make if you “conclude” or “think” she is lying, and why are you mixing those up with whether people are willing to publicly state their conclusions?

To be blunt: your writing is opaque. It’s impossible to tease out your meaning. Write more clearly. Remember that what goes on in your head is not mirrored in everyone else’s head. You need to put care into explaining what you mean in straightforward declarative sentences that others can grasp without strain. Your explanation above is, I’m sorry, a mess.

What’s your beef, and whom do you have a beef with? Exactly and precisely what are the “two types” of people? Describe them.

Benjamin, there is a significant difference between hostility and rage and not just a matter of degree, as I think you well know. Though I would be the first to admit that I have over the years developed a, to me, very healthy hostility toward just about everything to do with religion based on their continued actions, but I only rage about some aspects of it. E.g. the RCC and its recent actions for instance I definitely do rage against it and would love to see every country’s justice system bring them all up on RICO style charges. Also, much of it I simply find incomprehensible that any intelligent person could credit it at all, but they do.

However, if they keep it to themselves or among themselves, so that to me and mine and the secular world, it is of no more significance than, to papraphrase a mean old Gnu, someones knitting hobby, then I don’t really care what they believe. After all, we should all be allowed our little harmless foibles and eccentricities. Oh for the day, if ever and long past my time if then, that that is exactly how a faith based belief system will be regarded.

The Fractious Four have put forward some very attention-grabbing ideas in a post-Twin Towers world, where many of us have seriously questioned the purpose and limits of faith and supernaturalism. However, the Four (Dennett excluded) have put those ideas forward at the end of a fist, and in a way that questions the sanity and morality of anyone who disagrees with them. But see, that’s the point of a polemic … you put forward the most extreme version of your argument, and you don’t make any room for moderating views.

A polemic is a deeply emotional appeal made not just with anger, but with rage; not just with sadness, but with despair; not just with fear, but with gut-wrenching terror….

Rieux:

As an initial matter, the notion that the “Fractious Four”‘s work uniformly consists of “deeply emotional appeal[s] made not just with anger, but with rage” is an absurd falsehood. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is no polemic, as McLaren concedes (making her decision to include Dennett in her “Fractious Four” insult hard to fathom); meanwhile, Harris’s The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation bear no resemblance to the “rage”y description—and the notion that Dawkins’ The God Delusion is an “emotional appeal made not just with anger, but with rage” is a damnable lie. Only Hitchens’ god is not Great contains an ounce of the animus that McLaren pretends suffuses the writing of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris alike. (The idea that God Delusion or End of Faith “put th[eir] ideas forward at the end of a fist, and in a way that questions the sanity and morality of anyone who disagrees with them” is yet another offensive falsehood.)

Shame on McLaren for so thoroughly misrepresenting the nature of the works she attacks.

Nelson:

Rieux thinks that it is a lie for McLaren to say that Dawkins and company have certain ragey feelings and expressions towards religion. So what do we do when Dawkins in TGD says that, “As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise”?

The claim was that these works were “written with” rage, despair, and gut-wrenching terror [?], and it was ludicrous. Even if the authors had these feelings – and rage in some cases is entirely appropriate – the works weren’t “written with” or “deeply emotional appeals” to them.* Dawkins’ statement that he’s hostile to fundamentalist religion for reason X is a far cry from McLaren’s characterization of the works as a whole,** and you’re not accurately representing Rieux’s argument.

*With the added suggestion that this is all they are.

**Her presentation is so off-base that I have to wonder if she’s actually read TGD.

I deliberately chose to write about these uncivil behaviors as trends within the movement, rather than making examples of specific people[ii]. No one had directly offended against me, so why should I offend against anyone else? Instead, I used my own anger to write about attitudes, behaviors, and discourse styles … but not about specific people, because that’s not civil.

The claim of lying is an extraordinary one because more prosaic explanations are readily available. Even creationists have their own twisted steps of logic which they sincerely believe. It’s hard to find a creationist that is lying because their reasons make sense to them. Without a thorough back-and-forth to discover and understand McLaren’s explanations, the conclusion that she is lying is almost certainly premature.

Another problem with the lying explanation is that it’s not fleshed out. Are you saying McLaren is some kind of sleeper agent for the New Age movement? What exactly is the claim here? There must be a convincing reason to favor this explanation over the prosaic ones. For example if you discovered that McLaren makes money through a “healing crystals” racket, the lying explanation could quickly become more favorable.

My initial impression of the McLaren-is-lying hypothesis is that it’s in the same category as birthers and 9/11 truthers. The believers aren’t crazy, they’ve just taken things out of proportion. They’ll list for you all reasons for their claims, but they haven’t fully considered the regular, mundane reasons.

And the regular, mundane reason here is that McLaren has some line of reasoning which is not fully known or understood by us. It’s the same mechanism through which anyone believes anything.

But I’ve said too much because this isn’t complex. If the above is not obvious then I officially give up on the explanation. Assuming Josh is not just trolling I’ll restate my position. There are two types of people:

Type A: You actually believe McLaren is lying, OR you have no problem with public accusations of her lying.

Type B: You find it absurd that someone could actually believe, based upon the facts in evidence, that McLaren is lying. In short, you see it as fucked up. As in 9/11 truther fucked up.

Each is unable to reason with the other, and never the twain shall meet.

The claim of lying is an extraordinary one because more prosaic explanations are readily available.

Lying is a perfectly prosaic explanation.

And the regular, mundane reason here is that McLaren has some line of reasoning which is not fully known or understood by us.

Her characterization of TGD is patently false. She presents no evidence for it, and given the evidence of the book itself no line of reasoning could support it (if you think one does, you should present it – an imagined, hypothetical line of reasoning that you don’t know or understand is not a more regular, mundane explanation in the face of the evidence). There are three options: she’s lying about having read the book; she’s lying about the book; or she’s so stunningly incapable of reading comprehension and reason when it comes to this work that no one should take her words about it seriously.

Odd, isn’t it, and surely rather craven, how Stedman, who encourages such as McLaren and Luna to post their stuff on his blog, will not himself, despite being asked to explain why he thinks their opinions are worthy of publication, join the resulting fray but leaves all defence in the comments to his hench-women and -men, whom he seems to regard really as expendable sock-puppets, able to draw the fire that really should be directed at him for giving them a podium?

So we have Karla saying: the Four present their arguments at the end of a fist. Rage, despair, terror etc. How shocking.

And we have people here saying: No they don’t, they present their ideas clearly and calmly. Karla’s characterisation of them is an obvious deliberate falsehood, viz. a lie.

And we have MBurnett saying: Oh how shocking to accuse Karla of lying.

How, exactly is the accusation that Karla is lying more shocking than the accusations Karla makes against gnus? Why do you choose to clutch your pearls over the word “liar” but not over the actual lies?

McLaren claims that TGD is a book written with “not just with sadness, but with despair” (to be avoided in discussions because it “can make you seem constitutionally incapable of seeing the bright side of life”). From the last sentence of the book:

[I]’m thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

Since when it calling someone a liar the worst possible thing, and extraordinary to boot? Hell, I’ve been calling McLaren a fraud throughout, which is MUCH more serious in my opinion… and no pearl-clutching over that phrase. That’s weird enough for me.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier, that this reflexive rejection of the word “liar” is what corrupts our discourse to the point that liars don’t even lie with any sort of embarrassment or attempts at subtlety anymore. You can just spew anything so long as you’re on the “right” side of things, and the people who should be strongly calling you out are likely to use weasel words and delicate criticisms to avoid appearing too “shrill” or “polemic.” The problem with that is when someone makes a false, dishonest declaration, and you answer it with a weak rebuttal, you make it seem to outside observers as though the liar is still possibly correct and this is just a matter of “he said, she said” differences of opinion.

McLaren and Stedman, and Luna, and all the rest of their ilk are various combinations of rude, wrong, and dishonest. It would be another form of dishonesty for the people who see them that way to avoid saying so bluntly and openly in the name of false civility.

Incidentally, to muddy the waters a little, we have Geoffrey Hill, whose poetry I admired for many years, who is now the newly-elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and who resembles more and more in his photographic portraits some powerful and unhappy dark prince of the Church, writing in his new collection, Clavics (published in a beautiful edition by the Enitharmon Press, London), writing the following – which is set out on the page in the manner of George Herbert’s Easter Wings :

Parasites essential to survivals./ Such teaching I have well absorbed/ Long harbouring with grin/ My enemy./ He talks/ Well – Dawks – / Casts bonhomie/ To all save Mortal Sin – /Root-proclivity and morbid – / Parasites intolerant of rivals.

MBurnet, so what you are saying is that calling someone a liar who is evidently lying, unless you contort yourself into paroxyms of other ways of knowing what she means, which you seem intent on doing, is wrong. You sir are an unprincipled fool, go clutch your pearls on your fainting couch.

#105 – “Something important to note, that I don’t think has been mentioned, is that we’re certainly not engaging in any sort of double standards here. We outspoken Gnus can be lots of things, but one thing we aren’t is hypocrites; we sure as hell disagree with each other as openly and often as harshly as we do with theists/faitheists that we disagree with.”

#113 – “the squeamishness that people have about calling people liars is one of the things that allows liars to keep on lying with impunity”

#136 – ” You can just spew anything so long as you’re on the “right” side of things, and the people who should be strongly calling you out are likely to use weasel words and delicate criticisms to avoid appearing too “shrill” or “polemic.” The problem with that is when someone makes a false, dishonest declaration, and you answer it with a weak rebuttal, you make it seem to outside observers as though the liar is still possibly correct and this is just a matter of “he said, she said” differences of opinion.”

Me – I await your denunciation of your “new favorite commenter” Aquaria, who has made a “false declaration” regarding a piece of published academic research in this very thread, as I have pointed out (see #117). It would be a shame if “You [could] just spew anything so long as you’re on the “right” side of things”, and the people who should be strongly calling you out” either roundly praise the commenter or maintain a deafening silence regarding their “lies”.

That would be hypocrisy – and “We outspoken Gnus can be lots of things, but one thing we aren’t is hypocrites”!

The point of my comment in #139, to be clear, is not to embarrass Joe (he may not be embarrassed, but nonetheless that wasn’t my intention). My point is that all groups who think a certain way on a set of issues tend to engage in modes of arguing and reasoning which reinforce their own perspectives and discount other perspectives. I suspect if McLaren had come on here making claims of a certain piece of research, and linked that research, the reaction would have been very different – people would have read it, found that it was being misrepresented, and then every poster for a while would have jumped on that and called her a liar.

That didn’t happen in this case, and I think the fact that it didn’t – even after I pointed out the clear misrepresentation that was going on – is a measure of how this community of ideas, just like any other (and like me), is afflicted with certain cognitive biases which prejudice and guide our responses.

As rationalists and skeptics we should be most vigilant of these, and strive to take all measures we can to minimize their effect. In this case, the outcome is not “McLaren is right after all!”, but simply a timely reminder of our own argumentative blind-spots and the ways in which a certain sort of group-think can affect us all.

@James: for your comments re. Aquaria to be valid we would have to agree with your contention in 117 about the meaning of the study. I have read it and I disagree with you. If you consider the design of study 2 and consider what the “strong” and “weak” arguments were, I think Aquaria’s presentation of the study was quite correct.

It is surely hardly surprising that people are more persuaded by clear strong messages than by weak ones, and this is very relevant when people are routinely telling Dawkins et al. to stop making clear strong arguments in public. There’s an old joke about a liberal being a person too even-handed to take their own side in an argument. I don’t want to fall into that trap and I’m really not interested in hearing from people who have.

@SAWells: “If you consider the design of study 2 and consider what the “strong” and “weak” arguments were, I think Aquaria’s presentation of the study was quite correct.”

I quoted the authors themselves. This is what they said, in case you missed it:

“we defined message quality primarily in terms of how worthy the arguments were of serious consideration and how difficult the arguments were to counterargue”.

This has nothing to do with how strongly the arguments were “expressed” or “held” as Aquaria suggested. In the context of Aquaria’s comment, it is clear they were referring to a certain sort of “tone” rather than the actual quality of the arguments. Aquaria was responding to this:

“ I assert that free-range atheists attacking religious people is not the best way, and that it actually backfires horribly.”

And you say the study “is very relevant when people are routinely telling Dawkins et al. to stop making clear strong arguments in public”. It is obvious that what you mean by “strong” here is not what the authors mean by “strong”. If you can demonstrate a single instance in which anyone has said to a new atheist “do not make arguments which are worthy of serious consideration and are difficult to counterargue” then you might have a point.

Reading the four arguments in each of the “weak” and “strong” messages themselves, there is no obvious difference in terms of how strongly they are “held/expressed”. There is a marked difference in the quality of the arguments, but no evidence that one was held or expressed more strongly than the other. Indeed, although I don’t see the authors mention it specifically, they would be extremely wise to control for that very factor – I imagine that’s why they point out that “both messages were recorded by a male voice” (p. 938).

I submit that you have misread either Aquaria’s response or the study, and that you may have done so precisely because of the sorts of biases I am pointing to. I further note that you do not provide evidence from the article to substantiate your reading.

James, clearly we disagree entirely about both the meaning of Aquaria’s posts and the meaning of the study; we should probably drop it as we’re just going to counter-assert at each other. We may understand entirely different things by “a strongly expressed argument”.

Even creationists have their own twisted steps of logic which they sincerely believe. It’s hard to find a creationist that is lying because their reasons make sense to them.

It’s not at all hard to find a creationist who is a liar. The ones I argue with constantly talk about how they’ve read “both sides,” but when I press them to name a single source on evolution not written by a creationist, they can’t. It doesn’t matter if creationist logic says it’s fair to only read creationist sources; it’s still a lie to say you’ve read “both sides” if your only exposure to the “other side” comes from your compatriots.

The believers aren’t crazy, they’ve just taken things out of proportion. The believers aren’t crazy, they’ve just taken things out of proportion. They’ll list for you all reasons for their claims, but they haven’t fully considered the regular, mundane reasons.

Right, because believing demonstrably dishonest people are liars is as absurd as believing that the US government orchestrated 9/11. McLaren can have all the twisted justifications she pleases for her dishonesty, but the bottom line is, when one writes non-fiction, one has a duty to be as accurate as possible and not indulge in flagrant misrepresentation. And if one continues with those misrepresentations after being corrected by multiple people, then, intentions aside, it’s not unwarranted to call that person a liar on the basis that they should know better.

@SAWells – “we should probably drop it as we’re just going to counter-assert at each other. ”

I’m happy to drop it, but I do not wish to have my reasoned and evidenced argument referred to as an “assertion”. I didn’t assert – I reasoned, giving quotes from you, Aquaria and the article to substantiate my reading, and mentioning one thing you might do to counter at least part of my argument.

MBurnett – yes your Type A and Type B remain as arbitrary and meaningless as they were yesterday. Furthermore, I’m not sure you’re a good arbiter on this subject – you’re using a proxy ISP, so you perhaps have a secret agenda of your own.

you know transparently bossy and hostile … from where? I don’t know you in person, so I can’t prove this is pots and kettles, but it could well be.

Of course it could, and it is. Of course I’m bossy and hostile! The difference is that I don’t set myself up as a Teacher of Niceness. And one difference that makes is that I’m not bossy in the same way that McLaren is – I don’t use that particular form of social pressure: the one that goes “I’m warmer and kinder and more outreachy than you, so I get to tell you what kind of tone to use.” I’m bossy in the more obvious and easily ignored way of saying things like “Oh shut up” or “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” To put it another way, I’m aggressive while McLaren is passive-aggressive.

If you can demonstrate a single instance in which anyone has said to a new atheist “do not make arguments which are worthy of serious consideration and are difficult to counterargue” then you might have a point.

That’s exactly what people are doing. As Dawkins points out in the preface to the paperback edition of TGD:

[I]f you look at the language of The God Delusion, iit is rather less shrill or intemperate than we regularly take in our stride…

…If [the strongest language in TGD] sounds intemperate, it is only because of the weird convention, almost universally accepted…, that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism.

…Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant wit of their review. But in criticism of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a ‘rant’. Polite society will shake its head and purse its lips and shake its head: even secular polite society, and especially that part of secular society that loves to announce ‘I’m an atheist, BUT…’ (16-17).

This is what typically is done, and we expect it (though sometimes I think there’s deliberate misrepresentation going on) and ask for supporting quotations, which aren’t forthcoming (see Mooney’s response to requests that he substantiate his characterization of Coyne’s review of Miller’s book). McLaren’s characterization, though, is so baseless and goes so far beyond the typical “strident” and “shrill” blather that it enters the territory of either willfully dishonest or profoundly unreasoning/uncomprehending.

I don’t accuse everyone who misinterprets a study a liar, as you can see from my comments on posts about research claimed by accommodationists to support their so-called arguments. I haven’t read the one Aquaria posted yet, but I’ve read her comments for years and haven’t known her to be dishonest; in this case, it looks like you’re misunderstanding her or simply drawing a different interpretation as to its relevance. In any event, as I said, McLaren’s representation of TGD is so extreme as to be explicable only in terms of deliberate deception or a selective failure of reason and comprehension so profound that it should be dismissed as an irrational rant.

Wow, James… just wow. I think it is very likely that you’re not being entirely honest here. Certainly, there’s ZERO reason to accuse me of being a hypocrite, since all you’ve done is assert that people are lying, when those people have actually bothered to demonstrate where McLaren has been dishonest.

Let’s look at the… let me count… fifth and sixth sentences of the quoted study: “A 2nd study, which also examined message quality, showed that both high-and low-importance individuals were more resistant to a weak (vs. strong) message. This effect was explained by the fact that the weak (vs. strong) message engendered more irritation and negative affective elaborations.”

Here’s what Aquaria posted: “Because I have a study from the 90s that says that people with strong convictions respond best to strong (as in strongly expressed/held) opposing arguments and that weak arguments only make people with strong convictions irritated and shut down.”

And then what you posted: “It says nothing of the sort. The distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ arguments in the article is not between arguments which are “strongly expressed/held” and those which are expressed or held weakly.”… and then you started accusing people of being liars and hypocrites.

What do I take away from this?

Aquaria accurately quoted from the study itself, so claims of dishonesty seem to be themselves false and/or dishonest.

Aquaria may in fact be guilty of cherry-picking, but it appears to be unintentional, since it is picked from the very first paragraph of the study.

You quoted from the study, so I went back and looked at it. The study seems to use “strength” and “quality” as two separate elements of an argument, so your assertion appears to be incomplete, as opposed to intentionally dishonest.

Other people in this thread disagree with your assertion, and the quick skimming of the paper I’ve done makes the issue seem more murky and open to interpretation than you are claiming.

Therefore, your attack on me is only potentially embarrassing to you. You’ve made no case that I’m guilty of anything remotely approaching dishonesty or hypocrisy.

I suspect if McLaren had come on here making claims of a certain piece of research, and linked that research, the reaction would have been very different – people would have read it, found that it was being misrepresented, and then every poster for a while would have jumped on that and called her a liar.

So you’re accusing people of hypocrisy based on your assumptions about what they would have done in an entirely hypothetical situation. Not “you did this, you also did that, and these are parallel and inconsistent, making you hypocrites,” but “you did this, I suspect you would do that if such a parallel situation were to arise, this would be inconsistent, and therefore you’re hypocrites” – which you then use as evidence [!] that this community’s “afflicted with certain cognitive biases which prejudice and guide our responses,” and proceed to lecture us about recognizing our groupthink. Buzz off.

James – I don’t think the case of the disputed study is a good fit for what you’re claiming here, because it takes a whole large extra step to check it for accuracy of representation. That’s not true of McLaren’s post – the self-contradiction on Dennett is right there on the page, nothing to click, no study to read.

Your claim would have to be: “your particular bias prevents you from clicking on the study and reading it to see if Aquaria has it right, when you did click on the study that McLaren cited. If you click on one and don’t click on the other, that shows your bias.” That would be fair, but the claims about McLaren’s misrepresentation weren’t based on clicking on a study.

(Oh, I didn’t mean to imply in #153 that I accept the claim that Aquaria misrepresented the study or its relevance. I was taking issue there specifically with the silly hypocrisy-by-hypothetical construction.)

My bias about reading and engaging with studies in this context is, admittedly, against psychology studies, which I think are overused by by Mooney and others. It’s not a general anti-psychology bias at all, and I think there is relevant and interesting psychological research on these general subjects, but I’m biased towards sociology and real-world analyses of movements and change over longer time spans and more interested in reading those. Like you, though, I also have a bias to look “with a very beady eye” :) at claims and citations from people who’ve shown themselves to be less than honest.

I don’t want to derail the conversation, but I would like to register my discomfort with stigmatizing users of anonymizing proxies such as TOR, which I think is what MBurnett is using. There are plenty of good reasons to anonymize your connection, most of which have nothing to do with wanting to argue in bad faith. (For example, maybe you don’t want Google, Facebook, or any other large ad network building a profile of your browsing habits. Maybe you give some credence to the rumors that intelligence agencies are using them as data mining sources.) I’ve donated money to support the TOR project. I believe that it is a useful tool for everyone, not just for people I agree with. I’d appreciate it if we could lay off the “if you don’t have anything to hide, why are you hiding?” sentiment. Either someone’s argument stands on its own or it doesn’t; we don’t need to bring whether they’re using an anonymizer into it.

I don’t want to derail the conversation, but I would like to register my discomfort with stigmatizing users of anonymizing proxies such as TOR, which I think is what MBurnett is using. There are plenty of good reasons to anonymize your connection, most of which have nothing to do with wanting to argue in bad faith.

Oh, good grief. OB didn’t stigmatize proxy users. She pointed out that a single commenter, the content of whose posts appears biased, is using a proxy. Of course there are completely valid reasons to anonymize, but given the history here, I don’t think the suggestion that someone using a proxy to leave those comments might be something other than a new and disinterested party is any sort of stretch.

<blockquote>Benjamin, there is a significant difference between hostility and rage and not just a matter of degree, as I think you well know.</blockquote>

Sort of, but not in any way that really matters. Hostility is a disposition, and anger is an event, and rage is a powerful form of anger. But hostility without an occasion of anger is not hostility at all, in any literal sense. To be hostile is to portray yourself as angry towards something (among other things). And the difference between anger and rage is one of degree, not kind.

Key passages of the book were written with hostility on their sleeve. So it is totally fair to say that TGD is a work that’s hostile towards fundamentalist religion. The work was written with anger in the sense that it portrays itself as angry. — And frankly, along the way, he gives some pretty damn good reasons to be angry. No contest.

McLaren argues that polemics are emotionally over-the-top. They express rage instead of anger, gut-wrenching terror instead of fear, etc. I can’t see how she has read any of that in Dawkins’ book, and think it’s sort of a funny way of putting it. It’s hard to picture a cool cat like Richard Dawkins sitting there, eyes blazing in the firelight, stewing in his own rage. But because we’re dealing with a matter of degrees of feelings, it’s subject to interpretation.

Thank you for your replies, SC and Improbable Joe. I understand that these are emotive issues I’ve raised, and this discussion could easily degenerate. I want to forestall that by being very clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying.

First, I didn’t accuse anyone of lying. I was very careful not to do that. I do not think either Aquaria or Improbable Joe are lying, and I have not said that. I was very careful to say that I attribute any confusion regarding the study in question to an error of interpretation (which is entirely understandable – it’s not a particularly readable study, and includes two separate experiments in one report).

Nor do I think Improbable Joe is necessarily being hypocritical, although I understand how post #139 in isolation can be read in this way. I added post #140, which should have been part of the framing of #139 I now realize, to clarify my intentions and to make post #139 seem less harsh. I would ask that people read #139 in the context provided by #140. As I say I should have posted them together rather than separately – that is my error.

To reassert: my point is not that people here are lying or being dishonest. My point is that there is a certain double-standard when it comes to the analysis of evidence in support of various arguments. The same level of critical scrutiny is not being applied to posts by one of your own as is being applied to someone who disagrees with you. I believe I have given a specific instance and defended the validity of that instance. This is particularly noticeable given the vehement certainty with which the initial piece of evidence was presented (“Read it and fucking weep, Mooneytits.”) and the way in which this community was praising itself on its self-reflective and self-critical nature, as illustrated by the quotes I provided from Joe.

Now to respond to the individual posts.

#151:

“I think it is very likely that you’re not being entirely honest here. ”

What aspect of my post strikes you as not entirely honest? It’s not clear to me from your reply.

“all you’ve done is assert that people are lying”

I have not done so and in case I was unclear, I do not do so. I apologize that I gave you the impression that I was accusing people of lying.

“Aquaria accurately quoted from the study itself, so claims of dishonesty seem to be themselves false and/or dishonest.”

I disagree. Aquaria presented the study (she didn’t provide a quote from it), and in her presentation misrepresented fundamentally the import of the study. I have demonstrated twice how this is the case. The quotes you provide from the study do not support Aquaria’s reading, but ming – they demonstrate again that the second study was interested in “message quality”, which is not the same as the questions Aquaria claims the study addresses. It is clear to me from the context totality of Aquaria’s post (which refers to the civil rights movement and the utility of “being nice”, doing “rude things” and “being uppity” and “shrill”) that what Aquaria is referring to when talking about arguments which are “strongly expressed/held” are ones which are “shrill” and “uppity” and not necessarily “nice” and perhaps “rude”. I can draw no other interpretation from that post and the context in which it was made. Since the study cited does not address the question of the value of such methods, and means something quite different by the “strength” of the argument, the study is irrelevant to the question, and is being misrepresented (presumably in error).

“Aquaria may in fact be guilty of cherry-picking, but it appears to be unintentional”

This was the charitable conclusion I can to in my original post.

“The study seems to use “strength” and “quality” as two separate elements of an argument, so your assertion appears to be incomplete, as opposed to intentionally dishonest.”

From my careful analysis of the article this is not this is the case – it seems clear in the abstract that they use “weak” and “strong” as the measure of the “quality” of an argument – but nonetheless my argument still stands. The study has nothing to say regarding the questions Aquaria was using it to respond to, and so is irrelevant (though very interesting in itself).

“the quick skimming of the paper I’ve done makes the issue seem more murky and open to interpretation than you are claiming.”

Then I suggest you make a careful analysis rather than a quick skim. There’s something very odd about resting one’s response to an academic study on a “quick skim”, especially when you seem so engaged in the issue. The question warrant more attention than this.

@ Salty Current #149

I asked for examples of when “anyone has said to a new atheist “do not make arguments which are worthy of serious consideration and are difficult to counterargue.”” You haven’t offered in your reply an example. Your response is about responses to the New Atheists based on the “shrill” nature of the language in TGD, or the “intemperateness” of it. I agree that NAs often get attacked (unfairly) for “being “shrill” and “intemperate”. But that is not the issue here. The issue is if they are explicitly attacked on the basis that their arguments are too good. Do people ever say “Your arguments are too well reasoned – you should stop making them!” Clearly some people hear well-reasoned arguments against religion and then find an excuse to object to them on the basis of their perceived shrillness. But this isn’t the question at issue. For the study to be relevant at all there need to be attacks based on the “strength” of the argument as defined by the study’s authors. Those are not forthcoming in your response.

Incidentally, even if you could find such examples, it would not demonstrate that the research paper was a good fit for the situation – it would still be orthogonal to the point it seems Aquaria was trying to make. It would just be more generally relevant to the discussion of the diferent sorts of attacks NAs face.

“I don’t accuse everyone who misinterprets a study a liar, as you can see from my comments on posts about research claimed by accommodationists to support their so-called arguments. I haven’t read the one Aquaria posted yet, but I’ve read her comments for years and haven’t known her to be dishonest;”

This is why I was explicitly clear in saying that I was not doing so (in #117 I said “I will assume you made an error.”). Nor am I defending McLaren. I am merely pointing out that there do seem to be different forms of criticism applied to the arguments of those who disagree with the prevailing view here than to the arguments of those who champion the majority view.

#153:

” you’re accusing people of hypocrisy based on your assumptions about what they would have done in an entirely hypothetical situation.”

No, I am not making such an accusation. I am hypothesizing that, given the demonstrated behavior (which I have quoted at length) in this thread and on other occasions I have observed here, that were McLaren to do what Aquaria had done, she would be ripped to shreds. I am also observing that Aquaria has not been ripped to shreds, and indeed is being vigorously defended. I further note, on this occasion, that those defending Aquaria’s position have, by their own admission, either not read the study (you) or have merely skimmed it (Improbable Joe). I suspect you would demand a higher level of engagement if such responses came from people you didn’t agree with.

This hypothesis is not an “accussation”. It is my judgment based on considerable evidence in this thread which I have provided.

I will not “buzz off” and allow you to dictate the terms of conversation here. I will continue to provide well-reasoned, fully-evidenced arguments in favor of my position and detailed responses to those who disagree. I expect the same from you.

OB didn’t stigmatize proxy users. She pointed out that a single commenter, the content of whose posts appears biased, is using a proxy. Of course there are completely valid reasons to anonymize, but given the history here, I don’t think the suggestion that someone using a proxy to leave those comments might be something other than a new and disinterested party is any sort of stretch.

My point is that it would be interesting if that commenter’s IPs were familiar, but the only thing we can tell about an anonymized connection is the fact that they’re anonymized, and that isn’t — even if they’re arguing in a familiar pattern — evidence of anything. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It should be neutral. Pointing it out as something interesting, with mmm-hmms and plausible deniability about what exactly you’re doing rhetorically, is stigmatizing TOR users. It says that it’s ok to use TOR as long as you agree with us, but if you don’t, then your use is something extra suspicious. That’s not something I can get behind, and it makes me tempted to reconfigure Apache not to log or pass along IP information in the first place, which would be a shame, because it’s useful for diagnosing technical (as opposed to social) problems.

I wonder if there’s something about this time of year that makes me more prone to defending anonymity and pseudonymity, or if that’s just a coincidence?

James, I think my disagreement with you rests on two points. One is that you regard “strongly expressed”, as a quality of an argument, as being orthogonal to the objective force of the argument- hence your comments concerning tone of voice, I assume- whereas I regard the objective force of an argument as contributing to the strength of its expression; hence I read the “strong” arguments of the paper as given on page 938, “Message construction and pilot testing”, second paragraph, as being more strongly expressed than the “weak” ones. I can understand your point of view but I disagree with it.

Secondly, one of the major issues faced by gnus is that perfectly straightforward arguments expressed clearly – viz that religions routinely make fact claims which are not only wrong in point of fact, but also based on a fundamentally flawed epistemology – are described as being shrill, vehement, rude etc. merely because they are directed at religion, and a major gnu vs. accomodationist point of debate is whether to carry on making these arguments clearly and in public or instead to pipe down, sidle up to the fence-sitters and mewl pitifully at them. Aquaria’s citation is directly relevant as evidence of the value of strong points clearly put. If you’re not reading it in this context, then again you might have a different point of view.

Now stop spamming us with multipage screeds concerning our theoretical hypocrisy, it’s tedious, condescending, and far less objective and factually based than you imagine.

it makes me tempted to reconfigure Apache not to log or pass along IP information

Which, I should point out, is not something I’m going to do, because I recognize that OB does attract some stalker-y commenters and I don’t want to take away tools she can use to protect herself from them. I just wish they weren’t also being used in this way.

Hi SAWells: “I think my disagreement with you rests on two points. One is that you regard “strongly expressed”, as a quality of an argument, as being orthogonal to the objective force of the argument- hence your comments concerning tone of voice, I assume- whereas I regard the objective force of an argument as contributing to the strength of its expression”

Your disagreement then is not with me but with the authors of the study. I am merely pointing out that their definition is very different to how Aquaria uses the term. This makes the use of the study inappropriate in this context, and misleading. You haven’t said anything which substantiates a different view.

“one of the major issues faced by gnus is that perfectly straightforward arguments expressed clearly – viz that religions routinely make fact claims which are not only wrong in point of fact, but also based on a fundamentally flawed epistemology – are described as being shrill, vehement, rude etc. merely because they are directed at religion”

I agree with this, and said as much in #161. It is quite beside the point.

“Aquaria’s citation is directly relevant as evidence of the value of strong points clearly put.”

This is correct. This is not the argument Aquaria was making however. Nor is it a point contested by McLaren.

“Now stop spamming us with multipage screeds concerning our theoretical hypocrisy, it’s tedious, condescending, and far less objective and factually based than you imagine.”

How about you stop attempting to silence reasoned debate and discussion? Who appointed you lord of the universe? Your repeated attempt to shut down discourse on this issue without providing much evidence you have even understood it is childish, thoughtless and whiny, and far less impressive than you imagine.

I am amused that in your responses you are engaging in precisely the forms of rhetorical evasion of the central issue that, in this very thread, some have claimed are the sole province of the “faitheists”. You only succeed in demonstrating the accuracy of my analysis.

To reassert: my point is not that people here are lying or being dishonest. My point is that there is a certain double-standard when it comes to the analysis of evidence in support of various arguments. The same level of critical scrutiny is not being applied to posts by one of your own as is being applied to someone who disagrees with you. I believe I have given a specific instance and defended the validity of that instance. This is particularly noticeable given the vehement certainty with which the initial piece of evidence was presented (“Read it and fucking weep, Mooneytits.”) and the way in which this community was praising itself on its self-reflective and self-critical nature, as illustrated by the quotes I provided from Joe.

And your assertion is based on nothing. Even if your claim were right – and I don’t know that it is – that Aquaria’s post misrepresents the study, that is in no way analogous to what McLaren has done, and so people’s reactions to Aquaria’s comment can’t be compared to their reactions to McLaren’s post. You recognize this yourself, obviously, because you presented a hypothetical situation in which McLaren does do something parallel to what you’re accusing Aquaria of doing. You don’t get to claim a double standard based on your own presumptions of what would happen in a hypothetical situation.

I asked for examples of when “anyone has said to a new atheist “do not make arguments which are worthy of serious consideration and are difficult to counterargue.”” You haven’t offered in your reply an example. Your response is about responses to the New Atheists based on the “shrill” nature of the language in TGD, or the “intemperateness” of it. I agree that NAs often get attacked (unfairly) for “being “shrill” and “intemperate”. But that is not the issue here.

Here’s where you’re not following. The point is that strong, clear, difficult-to-refute arguments against religion are almost invariably characterized by accommies as intemperate, shrill, and strident. The arguments aren’t intemperate, shrill, or strident, so when the accommies tell gnu atheists to stop arguing as they have they’re really telling us to stop making strong, clear, difficult-to-refute arguments arguments against religion or its coddling. That’s what SAWells is trying to explain to you about different understandings. Even if the study isn’t fully on point re Aquaria’s understanding of “strongly expressed,” she seems to be working from this understanding.

The issue is if they are explicitly attacked on the basis that their arguments are too good. Do people ever say “Your arguments are too well reasoned – you should stop making them!”

Don’t be silly. Of course no one is going to come out and say that. However, since they’re unable to supply examples of their characterization of tone and attitude, and yet persist in telling gnus to stop saying what they are, it’s evident what their characterization is code for.

Clearly some people hear well-reasoned arguments against religion and then find an excuse to object to them on the basis of their perceived shrillness. But this isn’t the question at issue.

Yes, it is. And it’s certainly at issue with regard to Aquaria’s understanding of the study’s pertinence.

For the study to be relevant at all there need to be attacks based on the “strength” of the argument as defined by the study’s authors. Those are not forthcoming in your response.

See above.

“I don’t accuse everyone who misinterprets a study a liar, as you can see from my comments on posts about research claimed by accommodationists to support their so-called arguments. I haven’t read the one Aquaria posted yet, but I’ve read her comments for years and haven’t known her to be dishonest;”

This is why I was explicitly clear in saying that I was not doing so (in #117 I said “I will assume you made an error.”).

But this makes no sense. In your hypothetical, McLaren would present a study here as Aquaria’s done [given your claim that Aquaria’s misrepresented the study or its meaning in this context], and “every poster for a while would have jumped on that and called her a liar.” I’m saying that aside from your hypocrisy-by-hypothetical exercise being fundamentally untenable, it wouldn’t be an apt parallel anyway since I have past evidence of Aquaria’s honesty to go by, and your suspicions that form the basis for the hypothetical are not supported by past evidence in my or other cases. If you have anything other than your imagination to support your claims about this side of your alleged double standard, present it. If not, you should retract that claim.

Nor am I defending McLaren.

Yes, you are. You’re not engaging with the solid concrete support people have given for saying she’s lying, and instead tried to suggest that she would be accused of lying in completely different circumstances you dreamed up.

I am merely pointing out that there do seem to be different forms of criticism applied to the arguments of those who disagree with the prevailing view here than to the arguments of those who champion the majority view.

That’s likely true to some limited extent – I would expect it of any group, as would anyone. But you haven’t made the specific case you’re trying to make here. To do so, you would have to point to parallel cases with different responses in reality (and you’ve implicitly recognized that Aquaria’s comment and McLaren’s post aren’t analogous by resorting to a hypothetical). If you can’t, you should apologize.

No, I am not making such an accusation. I am hypothesizing that, given the demonstrated behavior (which I have quoted at length) in this thread and on other occasions I have observed here, that were McLaren to do what Aquaria had done, she would be ripped to shreds.

And this is the problem! If you have specific parallel examples of “demonstrated behavior” concerning people with contrary positions pointing to studies they’ve merely possibly misinterpreted and being “ripped to shreds” in the sense of being called a liar by every commenter based on that alone, then point to them. I’m telling you that in my case this is baseless and wrong.

I am also observing that Aquaria has not been ripped to shreds,

Again: “I suspect if McLaren had come on here making claims of a certain piece of research, and linked that research, the reaction would have been very different.” It doesn’t matter if Aquaria hasn’t been ripped to shreds for your perceived infractions if you can’t provide evidence of a parallel case in which someone who disagrees with people here has been. To make this case, you’d need to offer evidence of a gnu acting similarly to McLaren and receiving a different reaction or an accommie acting the same as Aquaria and getting a different reaction. These have to be parallel, and they have to be real.

I further note, on this occasion, that those defending Aquaria’s position have, by their own admission, either not read the study (you) or have merely skimmed it (Improbable Joe).

Because I don’t care about the study. As I said, I’m unlikely to engage with this type of psychology study (especially from the ’90s!) regardless of who presents it, although if I know someone to be untruthful I may try to engage with relevant research regardless of field). Present evidence to the contrary – that I’ve read and attacked a commenter who disagrees with me for presenting a psychology study in this context and called that person a liar. Otherwise, retract your claim.

This hypothesis is not an “accussation”. It is my judgment based on considerable evidence in this thread which I have provided.

You haven’t provided any evidence from this thread or any other of what people would do in your hypothetical situation. If you had it, you wouldn’t have had to resort to a hypothetical in the first place, as should be obvious to anyone.

I will not “buzz off” and allow you to dictate the terms of conversation here. I will continue to provide well-reasoned, fully-evidenced arguments in favor of my position and detailed responses to those who disagree. I expect the same from you.

Your arguments are garbage, and you are accusing people of a hypocritical double standard based on your imagination. If you won’t buzz off, I’ll just ignore you, as you have nothing worthwhile to say.

My point is that it would be interesting if that commenter’s IPs were familiar, but the only thing we can tell about an anonymized connection is the fact that they’re anonymized, and that isn’t — even if they’re arguing in a familiar pattern — evidence of anything. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It should be neutral. Pointing it out as something interesting, with mmm-hmms and plausible deniability about what exactly you’re doing rhetorically, is stigmatizing TOR users. It says that it’s ok to use TOR as long as you agree with us, but if you don’t, then your use is something extra suspicious.

Yeah, I get this, and I don’t see the use of proxies as suspicious in any general way. But I can’t agree with the idea that in this case it’s intended to be generalized (though people unfamiliar with the history may read it that way, to be sure). To be clear, I’m saying that given the history here, the use of a proxy to make comments on this blog that are…reminiscent is a bit suspicious. If that history didn’t exist, I don’t think OB or anyone would think twice about it. I see that it can look like stigmatizing all proxy users, so I apologize if that’s how it was reasonably interpreted. I meant it to apply in a specific way based on past events, and read Ophelia’s comment that way. I don’t think pointing it out does MBurnett-the-new-nym any harm, especially since we’ve engaged with the substance of the arguments, such as they were.

The same level of critical scrutiny is not being applied to posts by one of your own as is being applied to someone who disagrees with you.

As I’ve said, this is unsupported by evidence. But I should point out that given my recent treatment on another gnu blog, where I’ve commented for three years, in response to my presenting an unpopular argument, I can tell you from firsthand experience that a high level of critical scrutiny, to put it mildly, was applied to posts by one of our own.

***

This isn’t going to end well….

Oh, it might, because I’m no longer responding to these people or their illogical, unsubstantiated, derailing assertions.

I’ve been away from the ‘Net for a little while, and in my absence I’m gratified (but also a little embarrassed) that others, especially Salty Current, have been doing the grunt work of explaining the bases for my accusations (@115 and previously) for me. I have no problem at all with challenges to my assertions, but I do think the challenges on this thread have failed to come to terms with the specific substance of the assertions McLaren made and I criticized.

I would also add that, in my day job, to prove a “lie” one need not always show that the declarant actively knew that what he or she was saying was false. (That’s necessary to prove perjury—as Barry Bonds can tell you—but I wasn’t accusing McLaren of a crime.) I was just in court at the beginning of this month trying to prove to a judge that my opponent had engaged in “dishonesty” in a particular transaction, and thankfully I didn’t have to meet any such mens rea (“guilty mind”) requirement.

Around these parts, someone who makes a factually incorrect statement with a reckless disregard for the truth can accurately be said to be lying. (That standard is an import from defamation law and New York Times v. Sullivan.)

And on those terms, I don’t see room for reasonable dispute that McLaren’s declarations regarding:

(1) at least four of the first five big Gnu bestsellers (possibly she can make a case for god is not Great meeting her weirdly emotive definition of “polemic,” but even there she’s not clearly correct);

(2) the general Gnu critique of accommodationism; and

(3) Gnus’ (in)capacity to build communities

…are all lies. I just don’t think that one can state the things McLaren stated in her April 26 post without a severe and blameworthy disregard for the facts of all three of those matters.

SC and others have spelled much of the factual basis for that conclusion out above, I suspect in large part because I was AWOL; they have my thanks.

Around these parts, someone who makes a factually incorrect statement….

By “around these parts,” I meant where I work, not at Butterflies & Wheels.

Actually I think the standard I stated for demonstrating a lie is a reasonably good one wherever one is, but I sure as hell don’t have the authority to declare an Official B&W Definition of lying. Or in fact of anything.

Oh, but one more thing: I’ve strongly criticized Dawkins on threads where he’s participating for his representation of certain research and for other things. Ophelia also directly criticized him for his use of language in one instance, and he subsequently apologized. I’ve turned my critical scrutiny to all of the famous atheists, and I’ve strongly and publicly disagreed at some point or another with pretty much every gnu I’ve come into contact with, including Ophelia, Jerry Coyne, and Sastra* [!!!]. If someone’s going to try to make a case for my critical double standard in anything other than the most trivial sense, they’re going to have a hard road ahead of them.

I’m saying that given the history here, the use of a proxy to make comments on this blog that are…reminiscent is a bit suspicious. If that history didn’t exist, I don’t think OB or anyone would think twice about it.

Right. I wouldn’t. It’s just that there is this history, and this (for want of a better word) tone…

But don’t worry, I’m being punished. I somehow got the Win 7 Anti-spyware spyware, so I can’t get online (much less get rid of it), so I’m at the library and have to print removal instructions and then hope I can follow them well enough…

FWIW, Dawkins participated in the thread about the “Brights” label at Coyne’s blog yesterday. To the extent that the implied vote count means anything, he’s decidedly on the losing side of the debate there. People are, I suppose, being consistently polite to Dawkins in that discussion—but his position is being pretty thoroughly smacked down.

Nope. The law is a patchwork of compromises, mixtures of fact and claims about responsibility. In reality, a lie is always a matter of mens rea. The law says different because we sometimes want to make people responsible for epistemic negligence.

Nope. The law is a patchwork of compromises, mixtures of fact and claims about responsibility.

And Internet arguments aren’t? (“Nope”?)

In reality, a lie is always a matter of mens rea.

Well, sure. And a reckless disregard for the truth is a flavor of mens rea too: it’s a blameworthy mental state. I don’t understand your point; how are we supposed to state normative claims at all without making things “a matter of mens rea”?

The law says different because we sometimes want to make people responsible for epistemic negligence.

“The law says different”? But in New York Times v. Sullivan “the law says” the same thing (about defamation) that I said (about lying). Meanwhile, “the law says” that proving perjury requires showing the declarant’s specific intent to state a falsehood.

I don’t see why the standard of proof for demonstrating that Karla McLaren lied about Gnu Atheists (with the consequence that, er, readers should think less of her) ought to be the same as the standard of proof for demonstrating that Barry Bonds lied under oath to a grand jury (with the consequence of serious criminal penalties for Bonds). For understandable reasons having to do with human rights and the destructive nature of criminal punishment, it is very difficult to prove criminal dishonesty. Why in the world should we import that kind of standard to blog arguments?

I’m with Joe @113: there is value in calling a liar a liar. (And Barry Bonds is a liar!) I don’t understand what the counterproposal on offer here is supposed to be, or what it’s based on.

I honestly did not want to provoke another shitstorm on here. I am reevaluating the time I spend writing “screeds” like this and I’m not finding it so productive – likely many of you feel the same way! And since SC has sworn off responding I think I will too. I think we’ve both expressed our positions clearly and I don’t think there is much chnce of us coming to agreement.

Oh, good grief, her latest response really takes the cake. Apparently we’re keeping her from being part of the “conversation” because we’re just so damn violent and won’t listen to her:

I have no idea where to go from here. We have no relationship, no shared referents beyond secularism, and for those who have characterized me as the enemy, there is no way to hear me without crossed arms or raised fists. … So I am actually prevented from entering into a conversation under these conditions, and I won’t enter into a brawl.

Reckless disregard for truth is not a blameworthy mental state in any but the legal sense. That is, it does not as such describe an intent to do harm. Recklessness, like carelessness, is intention-free language. It describes a lack of care that one ought to have. It indicates an absence of some good intention, not the existence of an evil intention.

You are saying that the law has another idea — that is, by law, recklessness counts as one of the forms of mens rea. Well, sure. But that’s because the law is wacky. Recklessness is not an intentional, and hence mental, state — it’s a frustrated attempt by the legal system to force normativity into mentalese, even when that choice of language is hopeless. As far as reality is concerned, there are no recklessness neurons firing; the act of recklessness need not be preceded by the intent to be reckless.

To answer your question, we can state normative claims against people without blaming mental states by blaming their actions, their effects, and the duties to perform in certain ways. In particular, we may say a man has failed his duties in this or that way, even if they weren’t aware of their duties and was not intentionally flouting them. If you’re a lawyer, then you recognize this as “strict liability”.

To clarify, my comment about what ‘the law says’ was in reference to your comment that “to prove a “lie” one need not always show that the declarant actively knew that what he or she was saying was false.” Sorry for not being specific. I thought context would make that obvious, but I’m usually wrong about that. To rephrase: the law says that you don’t always need to show that the person actively knew that what he or she was saying was false. And so much the worse for the law.

I don’t see why the standard of proof for demonstrating that Karla McLaren lied about Gnu Atheists (with the consequence that, er, readers should think less of her) ought to be the same as the standard of proof for demonstrating that Barry Bonds lied under oath to a grand jury

If you don’t think lying must, in all real-world cases, involve providing evidence that there is an intent to deceive, then you are using the term irresponsibly, and should reconsider. On the other hand, if you do agree that you need to show that there is an intent to deceive, then of course that doesn’t mean you have to meet the standards of evidence required at trial. It only means that you need to show more than that they are in error.

And you haven’t tried to show the intent to deceive when it comes to items (2-3). On the other hand, your claim (1) is in better shape than (2-3), because she waffled on Dennett. That shows that she certainly made a mistake, and probably because she fell victim to her own polemical spirit. But she gave the rope for her own hanging, so to speak. And if that’s an intent to deceive, then it’s a massively silly attempt, you must admit. So it’s more likely she made a mistake.

Jason (@ 20) nailed something that drives me up a wall: the “oh I’m sooo busy with my Very Important Real Life to follow this discussion” card. It crops up all the damn time in World of Warcraft discussions, as well as political discussions. It might be the single most condescendingly arrogant comment type on the interwebz, and I’m including what 4chan does to asshole websites (and innocent websites too but I’m thinking specifically of the forums for that Christian Militia or whatever in Michigan a couple years back; it was hilarious, and very NSFW).

Reckless disregard for truth is not a blameworthy mental state in any but the legal sense.

I fundamentally disagree. The very concept of recklessness (as well as its milder form, negligence) is a thoroughly normative one that, it seems to me, applies readily to all sorts of behavior that is objectionable even when it isn’t unlawful. One can act recklessly toward the facts, toward another’s feelings, toward the possibility of experimenter error… toward an innumerable number of factors that come up all the time in everyone’s life. The concept of an expected duty of care is absolutely not just a legal one, it’s an ethical one—and I’m a little taken aback that you don’t think that’s self-evident.

Recklessness, like carelessness, is intention-free language.

Not in my lexicon it certainly isn’t. It has everything to do with a mental state—it’s a level of disregard, which is something that happens (or doesn’t) in brains—and it’s entirely founded on moral expectations. Both law and ordinary ethics demand a certain level of attention to the world around us, and to the consequences of our actions. To claim, as I get the sense (no?) that you are, that no blame can ever be attached to an action unless the negative outcome was the result of intent (rather than mere knowledge, recklessness, or negligence) seems to me absurd.

If I get in my Toyota and go tooling out onto a city street with heedless abandon regarding whether I’m likely to collide with oncoming traffic, I assure you that my absurd recklessness renders me legally responsible—both in criminal law and in tort—for a host of possible disasters that could result. Are you really asserting that, because I’m merely being reckless, my responsibility is only legal, that no one has any basis to consider my conduct ethically blameworthy at all?

As far as reality is concerned, there are no recklessness neurons firing; the act of recklessness need not be preceded by the intent to be reckless.

So what? Why can’t we have an expectation that persons performing various acts (such as driving cars onto streets, or attacking other writers in print) have a certain set of “care neurons firing,” such that the absence of such neurons is a blameworthy mental state? That certainly is a necessary element of the ethical system I hold.

It seems to me that legal recognition of the existence and blameworthiness of recklessness and negligence isn’t “wacky,” it’s (in this instance) an accurate reflection of worthwhile ethical principles.

[W]e can state normative claims against people without blaming mental states by blaming their actions, their effects, and the duties to perform in certain ways.

Well, fine: by that account, recklessness and negligence are descriptors of actions (with negative effects) that are taken during and/or due to a failure to perform one of a small set of “duties to perform in certain ways”—specifically, a duty of care. What exactly is the meta-ethical problem with demanding a duty of care, and then imposing blame when that duty is shirked?

If you’re a lawyer, then you recognize this as “strict liability”.

But wait—that’s legal wackiness. Strict liability is just the name for the absence of any mens rea requirement whatsoever. It’s the legal system throwing up its hands and declaring that a plaintiff or prosecutor doesn’t have to show any kind of intent (including recklessness or negligence) at all—no knowledge, no disregard of a duty of care, nothing—but rather just prove that Act X happened, and then the defendant automatically loses. It’s an admission of defeat by a legal system: it’s only used in situations in which the system has decided that plaintiffs/prosecutors can’t possibly be expected to show any kind of mens rea, such as product-defects liability or statutory rape. You think that’s a better model for ethical theory than a duty of care is? I just entirely disagree.

To rephrase: the law says that you don’t always need to show that the person actively knew that what he or she was saying was false.

And my response was that sometimes the law says that. Other times (e.g., Bonds and perjury) it places big obstacles in front of the person asserting dishonesty. (Actually, even the New York Times v. Sullivan standard is pretty tough for plaintiffs to meet, in practice. It’s intended to be so.)

If you don’t think lying must, in all real-world cases, involve providing evidence that there is an intent to deceive, then you are using the term irresponsibly, and should reconsider.

I think you’re wrong. I think public speakers making pronouncements about others have an ethical duty of care to investigate the matters sufficiently to ensure that those pronouncements are defensible, are colorably true. When the coercive power of the state gets involved (in the form of defamation law and various other harsher measures), there are and should be more limited avenues of recourse. But a falsehood told with reckless disregard for its truth seems to me obviously ethically blameworthy, and indeed fully deserving of being called a “lie.” To limit the term only to intentional falsehoods—surely you realize that human beings can talk themselves into believing nearly anything we would like, no?—seems to me to make the term “lie” effectively useless, and I can’t imagine that helping anyone except liars.

And you haven’t tried to show the intent to deceive when it comes to items (2-3).

No, I think all of McLaren’s lies, as far as I can tell, are reckless (as opposed to intentional) ones.

I’m actually less troubled by the waffling on Dennett than you and Ophelia are, because I don’t think McLaren’s actually accusing Dennett of anything; her case regarding him is simply incoherent, as she pretty much admits. (“He’s fine, but I’m going to call him ‘fractious’ anyway, which is probably silly, oh well.”) To my mind, that’s not lying; it’s just dumb.

So it’s more likely she made a mistake.

Oh, I think so—a pigheaded, heedless mistake that we have every ethical right to demand she avoid making. I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing a good reason to eject the concepts of recklessness and negligence from the realm of legitimate ethics.

I thought I could join in the discussion over there. I can’t. I’m not strong enough. I’m too tired. It’s absurd. You bring up one point, and she replies addressing a different point. People ask for specifics, and she somehow becomes more general about something completely fucking unrelated. I have never seen someone spend so much time and so many words saying absolutely nothing. I see no good in continuing to argue with her. Which is sad, because I really love arguing.

You’re back! :) Yes. I think I may agree with her about world views. In mine, it’s unethical to massively misrepresent the arguments or works of those with whom you disagree; in hers, it doesn’t seem to be. There does appear to be a very different value attributed to truth and its honest seeking and presentation in our “world views.” Whether or not this is permanent in her case, I don’t know.

(Rieux’s comments there continue to be excellent, and articulett’s no slouch, either.)

In my first comment (#64) I expressed some surprise at an apparently sincere accusation that McLaren is actually lying. Knowing the difficulty of making that case based on a few blog posts, my reaction was,

Really? Seriously — really?

If I could tack on another sentence to that it would be, “How could you possibly be so sure?” My surprise is regarding the apparent confidence in this specific claim of lying, not regarding the fact that someone called someone else a liar.

Improbable Joe (#67 #81) and others construed my comment to mean something like “Don’t call people liars.” Since this was not at all my intent, I responded,

It looks like my question was changed into a hypothetical: “If someone is lying, then…” No, no. The question was whether Ms McLaren is lying.

Yet Improbably Joe comes back with his original misunderstanding: “…the squeamishness that people have about calling people liars is one of the things that allows liars to keep on lying with impunity.” Though he didn’t address me directly, I clarified a second time:

I’m all for calling liars liars. That’s not relevant to my point. It seems people are inclined to see “tone” arguments here. This isn’t a tone argument.

What interests me is whether the inference that McLaren is lying is reasonable. How one chooses to respond if that is established is an entirely independent matter.

Surely that should put it to rest. We are all on the same page now, right? Well, Joe comes back again with the same confusion: “…that this reflexive rejection of the word ‘liar’ is what corrupts our discourse…” This time he mentions the word “extraordinary”, so I know it’s in reference to what I said.

Third time, Joe: No, no, I am all for calling people liars. However in order to do so, you first have to demonstrate that they are liars.

The reason I point this out is to come full circle to my original post (#64). There is something preventing Improbable Joe from understanding what I’m saying. This problem abounds in the New Atheist blogs, but it has nothing to do with New Atheism. It’s a general Internet problem which causes people to not understand each other.

It was a fascinating thing to watch sociologically, even if it made me feel physically ill as an individual.

To paraphrase one of my favorite exchanges from Seinfeld:

Me: I have a suspicion that she’s using her status as a social researcher to talk shit about gnus.

Dude: And this offends you as a Gnuish person.

Me: No, it offends me as a sociologist.

It would have been great if she could have used her New Age experience to offer sociological insights into that culture (or set of cultures), and use them herself to develop effective outreach that she could model. (Sastra’s done it to an impressive extent, and is a respected voice; others, too.) She doesn’t seem to have done that at all. I don’t know what her goals or values are.

The first thing I ought to say is that I should clarify that I’m not engaged in a big project to overturn the law. Rather, I’m pointing to the discrepancy between the law and folk psychology when it comes to the meaning of possessing a blameworthy intentional state (mens rea), and trying to say something about what that tells us about morality.

We largely agree about ethical blameworthiness. For i think, just like anyone (I hope), that reckless disregard for the truth is blameworthy to some degree. I absolutely do believe in a duty of care. However, two caveats:

a) I happen to think that a lie is ceteris paribus more blameworthy than a blunder, which is more blameworthy than a mistake or an error. To lie is to flout all kinds of duties, including the duty of care, the duty to fidelity, etc.; blunders fail the duty of care; and mistakes involve a minimal (but insufficient) effort, so it’s not clear where they stand with the duty of care. I think that we shouldn’t treat all these things on the same level. So I’m not rendering the word “lie” useless — I’m just reserving it for special occasions.

b) The duty of care is moderated by your social duties and social role. e.g., If you purport to be a doctor, your duty of care when giving medical advice is a lot more stringent than grandma’s. Or, more to the point: someone weighing in on new atheists and the accommodationists has a duty of care to find out what the fuss is about. That’s where I say she made a mistake.

We don’t seem to agree about lies and recklessness and the relation to mental ascriptions, but I think I would phrase my disagreement in terms that you put it in. As you put it, recklessness is characterized by the absence of some intentional state that a person ought to have. In terms of folk psychology, the entire point of the charge of recklessness is that there isn’t a relevant mental state to be found. Rather, all the blameworthy features of the person’s behavior belong elsewhere: the harmful consequences (whether they foresaw them or not), the duty of care (whether they recognize them or not).

I can respect the fact that you find strict liability cases weird. I come from a standpoint that is, perhaps, more sympathetic to consequentialism. Still, we don’t need to argue about that. My point in bringing up strict liability is only that here you have some cases where there is normativity — we say that X ought to do something — but there’s no relevant mental state to blame. It was meant as a literal answer to your question about how this was possible.

I honestly did not want to provoke another shitstorm on here. I am reevaluating the time I spend writing “screeds” like this and I’m not finding it so productive – likely many of you feel the same way! And since SC has sworn off responding I think I will too. I think we’ve both expressed our positions clearly and I don’t think there is much chnce of us coming to agreement.

I think we’ve isolated an area of genuine fundamental disagreement between us: disparate ideas about the utility of applying the term “lie” to reckless but not fully intentional falsehoods. (I’m with you entirely on your paragraph (b)… all the way up until the very last verb and noun.) Otherwise, your most recent comment seems to me to show that we don’t disagree on much.

Your lie/blunder/mistake system is amusing, and I don’t mean that derogatorily. I’m not sure I agree with you down the line on it, but it’s an interesting way to slot those concepts into a theoretical hierarchy.

Then, least materially:

I can respect the fact that you find strict liability cases weird. … It was meant as a literal answer to your question about how this was possible.

Okay. I certainly didn’t understand that as the context.

And yes, I think strict liability is at least weird. In criminal law it seems to me frightening: the fact that statutory rape is a strict-liability crime (though only in 22 states, says the unquestionable legal authority Wikipedia) raises the possibility that I’ve committed it several times with my wife. I sure think she turned 34 this past month, and I think I’ve seen fairly good evidence of that fact; but if I turn out to have been wrong in a particular way about it, I’m unequivocally guilty of statutory rape (according to the law in those 22 states). Eek.

The other obligatory example is products liability, and there I’m not so disturbed. The notion is that when your gas grill blows up in your face, you don’t have a chance in hell of proving in court that Char-Broil was negligent in the manner in which they designed or built the grill. Arguably strict liability places too much of the deterrence burden on manufacturers, but then there’s the Coase Theorem and “assuming transaction costs are zero, the rule doesn’t matter” and zzzzzzzzzz. Anyway, strict-liability torts aren’t as scary as strict-liability crimes.

‘What’s going on in her mind?’ asks SC of McLaren. The answer, surely, is ‘Not very much!’ I think she is simply not intelligent enough to understand the valid points (which have been repeated over and over to her) that people have raised about her silly, wrong and ill-written pieces. And when this lack of intelligence is combined with the sort of confidence that derives not from actually knowing anything or from having thought seriously about something, but – seemingly – from some sort of New Age confidence-enhancing training or a seminar for saleswomen (and men), you get the kind of vacuous and self-piying responses that are her stock-in-trade when challenged. But I do not think that she is primarily to blame. The person who really is to blame is Chris Stedman who acts, rather like the wife of an alcoholic (and I am not making an anti-gay slur here), as an enabler for such as McLaren and Luna by supplying them with a podium from which to pour their preachings. I think the person who seriously needs to be taken to task, asked exactly why he thinks McLaren’s and Luna’s pieces were worth printing, and why, when their writings are attacked he makes no effort to defend them but leaves it all to McL & L, is Stedman.

James entirely ignored my argument and simply repeated that the authors of the study did not use the term “strongly expressed”.

Which is irrelevant, because Aquaria didn’t claim to be quoting the authors when she talked about “strongly expressed” arguments.

I think Croft hallucinated a claim that Aquaria didn’t make- mistook a paraphrase for a quotation – and then spammed the thread with whining, accusations of fraud and hypocrisy, and generally being a pompous arse.

MBurnett, I’m not misunderstanding you. Mostly, I’m ignoring you. Every time you see me post the words “lie” or “liar” you seem to think I’m directly addressing you. I think I only addressed you one time, and past that I’ve been talking about the more general point. At this point, you seem to be desperate for someone to talk to you… which is a shame, since this is the LAST time I’ll be commenting in regards to you on this issue.

What was fascinating to me is how deeply personally some people took the first post, and then how those people brought in others to share and intensify their feelings of anger and betrayal. Instead of asking me what was going on, they told me who I was, what I said, how I think, and every other thing.

Rieux’s dealt with this, but I’m baffled by the phrase I emphasized. Asking her “what was going on”? What does it mean, and why would she expect anyone to do this?

The claim of lying is an extraordinary one because more prosaic explanations are readily available.

Improbable Joe, two and one-half hours later (#136):

Since when it calling someone a liar the worst possible thing, and extraordinary to boot?

Emphasis added in both quotes.

Improbable Joe, you contend that in #136 you were not addressing what I said. In addition to the above correlation, the sentiment you express in #136 matches that which you expressed in #67 and #81, and both of those were explicitly addressed to me. Your comments #67, #81, and #136 all contain the same misunderstanding I described in #189.

Rieux’s dealt with this, but I’m baffled by the phrase I emphasized. Asking her “what was going on”? What does it mean, and why would she expect anyone to do this?

McLaren’s approach–and maybe this goes a long way toward describing why she’s shocked that she has ruffled so many feathers—seems to me to have enormous overtones of counseling-speak and practice, under which one is not supposed to concentrate at all on who did what to whom, who’s right and who’s wrong, and so forth. The focus is supposed to be on emotional connection, on each person communicating and being understood regarding how (s)he feels. It sure looks like that’s the only mode McLaren can function in—or at least it’s a mode she’s insisting on conducting this exchange within, notwithstanding the jerky lawyer- and scientist-types who want to make it all about hypotheses and accusations and evidence and inferences from facts on the record.

Maybe I’m over-reading this, but I wonder whether being locked into a counselor role, with its idiosyncratic approach toward conflict (including conflict over issues of fact and value), is the “world view” problem that’s giving McLaren such overwhelming problems in the exchange. It looks like she wrote various things about Gnus (that happened to be offensive and false) and then was discombobulated by the fact that a bunch of people posted spirited disagreement without even trying to achieve emotional connection with her.

To extend my airy hypothesizing still further, whaddyawanna bet that that reliance on the “counselor” approach is de rigueur in the New Age community? I glanced at a few of McLaren’s posts on her own blog about her New Age experience, and she certainly seemed to see it that way—though her ability to step outside the milieu to analyze that fact, and to leave that community as the result of its inability to apply any skeptical inquiry whatsoever to crazy woo, sort of implies that she’s not as blinkered as she’s letting on in the current discussion.

My guess is that that McLaren in effect believes that dealing with matters of fact and value the way we lawyers and scientists do is lowly, ignoble, and pointless-if-not-destructive in the context of efforts to build communities. So Gnus aren’t community-useless “bomb makers” because we’re polemicists, it’s because we’re relentless fact-floggers. And that, come to think of it, does indeed imply a serious “impasse” with her more persistent opponents.

But goodness. I can see the utility of a “never mind who’s right; we need to understand each other’s feelings” approach when the fundamental goal is to sustain and strengthen a friendship or a marriage. But can you really run a society that way—with such basic disinterest in both is-es and oughts? That sure seems to me like a recipe for simply crazy levels of groupthink and solipsistic emotionalism.

I’m digging what you’re saying, except I think you’re missing a vital point about McLaren. I think you’ve got the whole part right about the emotional/New Age nonsense she’s spewing, but I think you’re mistaken as to her overall perspective.

McLaren has spent three decades conning people who are emotionally confused by telling them what they are really thinking and feeling. She’s certainly got a “counselor” perspective, but I think she’s convinced that everyone who she disagrees with is a patient who needs her to explain what they really feel that explains why they don’t accept her without question, and not a person who thinks she’s wrong. That’s she she ignores what people are actually saying to her, and certainly avoids any facts on the ground. She’s got her cold-reading hat on, and she’s by Crom going to tell us what we really feel, and facts be damned!

Basically, I think she is, but that a more apt term is “defamatory bullshitting.” Whether habitual compounded bullshitting counts as “lying” is mostly a derail, but…

Defamatory bullshitting can be a species of lying, even if the first-order claims are honestly believed, and even if by some bizarre coincidence the claims happen to be true.

Doing it habitually as Karla does is pretty clearly lying, IMHO—she’s clearly claiming to know things that she can’t actually know, and evading issues of whether her high confidence in her outrageous and derogatory claims is justified. I think she knows she’s being evasive, to some extent, and knowingly bulling her way through the controversy over whether she’s bullshitting, which compounds the offense. I think it’s legitimate to call that lying.

Of course I can’t claim to know that for sure—I’m not the kind of reliable mind-reader Karla clearly thinks she is. Maybe she’s a sincerely zealous overconfident kook who’s just paranoid about gnus, and who really doesn’t get it at all that she’s making extreme, unqualified claims without appropriate hedges and qualifications or any serious attempt at reasonable justification. But if she’s not lying at all, at any level, she’s even kookier than she seems.

Joe @204—shocking though it may be to bystanders, I really want to give McLaren the benefit of some kind of doubt on some of those background issues, such as the nature of her “New Age healer” activities. I’m certainly not retracting what I’ve said about her dishonesty (and I prefer calling it “lying” to calling it “defamatory bullshitting,” despite Paul’s interesting argument—I know I’d rather be accused of the former than the latter!). Still, I think it’s just possible to construe her behavior on NonProphet Status as that of a well-meaning (at least in her own mind, which is more than a little burdened by religious privilege) but heavily blinkered person who posted what she thought were uncontroversial ideas about Gnus and then was entirely shocked by the fervency and rhetorical approach of the pushback. Her writing just concentrates so heavily on the emotional content of various exchanges, to the total exclusion of anything that shows that she comprehends the content of the argument she herself has made, not to mention her opponents’ responses… as a result, I wonder whether she even gets, on a basic level, what the factual and normative matters she has placed at issue are.

But I have to admit that that picture of McLaren—one that makes her out to be cringe-inducingly slow-witted—fits poorly with some of the evidence she has provided, including her writing on her own blog about leaving New Age for skeptical reasons, her use of terms like “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy” (not exactly a common counseling term) and various other things. And in that case, we’re back where we started, with McLaren not confused but rather dishonest, evasive, passive-agressive, superior, and malign.

Regardless of your opinion of McLaren’s professional behavior and whether it was/is intentionally or unintentionally fraudulent, and her views of her own and other people’s emotional responses, I think that my point still stands that she behaves like she’s lecturing people who have actively sought out her advice. She has taken on a tone of wise counselor, and everyone who disagrees with her is a barely-competent client who desperately needs the advice that only she can give. She actively talks down to everyone who disagrees with her, dismisses every and all criticism when she even bothers to acknowledge it at all, and has adopted a “Karla knows best, just hush up and do as you’re told” tone throughout. She just comes off as a very smug, self-impressed, and flatly nasty person. Being on the defense does that to some people, but she brought it on herself.

Whatever “the atheist movement” might be, the last time I checked no one elected Karla McLaren to be its president or “emotional counselor” or whatever position of superior authority she’s adopted in her mind.

Joe:<blockquote><i>Regardless of your opinion of McLaren’s professional behavior….</i></blockquote>Yeah, I guess it’s more my hope than my opinion. Anyway, I’ve defended her enough, and I can’t dispute the rest of what you say here.

Having now looked at a few of Stedman’s own mawkish pieces, I see why he, McLaren & Luna get along. Birds of a feather. He has carried over the obliviously saccharine Christian sentimentality that he was brought up with into his present task as self-appointed counsellor in eirenism to the world and in particular to the gnus (one notices it’s only the gnus who seem to come in for talkings-to and scoldings). The trouble is that he, as well as McLaren, are pathetically naive (‘Why can’t we all be nice to one another and tolerate one another’s beliefs?’) – just look at the views of Fundamentalists or at those of the Catholic church: neither are under any illusion about being at war. Here’s something from a Catholic web-site on the subject of ‘eirenism’:

‘This attitude of “peace at all costs” with heretics and schismatics, regardless of the points of doctrine which separate us, was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1950 under the name of eirenism.

‘These advocate an “eirenism” according to which, by setting aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma (Humani Generis, no. 11).

‘The unequivocal condemnation of this attitude was the final conclusion of his magnificent encyclical against the modern errors:

Finally, let them not think, indulging in a false “eirenism,” that the dissident and erring can happily be brought back to the bosom of the Church, if the whole truth found in the Church is not sincerely taught to all without corruption or diminution (Ibid. no. 43).’

‘Heretics and schismatics’ (not to mention the atheists) – this is the contemporary Catholic church. This is the kind of attitude that we are ultimately up against, and it is folly to pretend that attitudes like these, which one hopes Stedman & McLaren do not find worthy of toleration, are typical of the divisiveness and intolerance that are endemic in religion. Fudge is no answer. These attitudes need to be addressed, and it is not being intolerant or discourteous to do so.

McLaren has spent three decades conning people who are emotionally confused by telling them what they are really thinking and feeling. … She’s got her cold-reading hat on, and she’s by Crom going to tell us what we really feel, and facts be damned!

It sure looks that way. She did it yet again in her latest say-nothing reply: “I know that this disapprobation is supposed to frighten or anger me, or silence me, or force me to explain myself in the exact way you’ve decided I must do, but honestly, it just makes me tired.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Rieux (#208)

Still, I think it’s just possible to construe her behavior on NonProphet Status as that of a well-meaning…but heavily blinkered person who posted what she thought were uncontroversial ideas about Gnus and then was entirely shocked by the fervency and rhetorical approach of the pushback.

That could be true and not contradict what Joe said. My pre-skepticism background is a New Age one. I even used to do free psychic readings in AOL chats, so I’m somewhat familiar with the interplay between reader and read-ee. People looking for readings encourage the kind of “here’s what you’re thinking and feeling” approach Karla likes so much, and if you don’t recognize that the so-called success of your readings relies mostly on people’s desire to be taken in rather than on your own skill or perceptiveness, you might develop an unrealistic image of your ability to read people. And that could linger even after you’ve put aside the psychic nonsense.

Yeah, coincidentally I’ve been watching ‘The Mentalist’ on TV tonight, and McLaren seems to think she’s some sort of TV “empath” who can take cursory glances at people and automatically know everything about them. Or those “human lie detectors” on ‘Lie To Me’… one of that type.

She’s also been insisting that she doesn’t need to actually read any of the criticisms leveled against her before passing judgment on the substance of the arguments AND the motives behind them. That makes me wonder if she’s ever actually read any of the books or watched any of the speeches given by the “fractious four” who she makes all sorts of claims about. If I had to bet money on it, I’d put $50 on her watching a couple of the most strident YouTube clips and reading negative reviews, and then claiming complete and perfect knowledge of all ‘Gnu’ Atheists everywhere.

Understanding the healthy expression of each emotion helps us work with its trapped and unhealthy forms – the ones that can hurt us or other people. Rage is dishonored anger – it is self-protective energy that has become unhinged. Rage comes forward when our healthy anger has been ignored, and it always relates back to a hidden or forgotten self-image or boundary issue. Repetitive rage can also be a sign of a clinical depression – especially in men. So if we’re enraged, there is always a good reason. The Language of Emotions helps us feel rage (as if we could ever stop rage!) without acting against others in response to it. This process allows us to refrain from repressing our rage or expressing it inappropriately, which enables us to use the intensity inside the rage to do some specific inner work.

When you feel rage, you ask the anger questions very insistently: What must be protected? What must be restored? Then, with your empathic skills engaged, you work through the answers rage gives you. It’s a startling and beautiful process to experience, because rage will actually answer you in specific and life-changing ways. Then, it will contribute the energy you need to make specific and protective changes in your demeanor, your behavior, or your attitude. When it’s utilized appropriately, your rage doesn’t destroy you or hurt anyone else; it actually helps you mature. The same is true of all of the supposedly dark emotions – each one of them will perform amazing healing work when you simply listen to it empathically and act upon its information honorably.

Yeah, A., it looks like she’s decided to take her ball and go home. There’s a discouraging aspect to that—she just can’t bring herself to think hard about what she did and why it makes Gnus unhappy—but on the other hand, it seems a little unlikely that she’s going to be Gnubashing in public any time soon.

That suggests one benefit (not that there aren’t costs) to harsh rhetoric directed at Gnubashers: in many circumstances, such overt scorn effectively communicates a community’s disapproval of a particular kind of harmful behavior. Obviously such a response can be abused by prejudiced majorities (and that, indeed, is what McLaren is pretending has happened here)—but scorn can have value when it’s directed at behavior that really does cross legitimate ethical lines. At the risk of sounding as paternalistic as McLaren herself, she learned a lesson in this episode, even if the way she constructs that lesson in her own mind appears to be rather inaccurate.

Or maybe faith and religion are “imperfect” examples of faulty reasoning? *giggles*

Oh my gosh, reading through the “woo” makes my head spin– so many words used; so little said. How does she KNOW this stuff? How would she know if she were wrong? Egads– I actually used to think this sort of new-agey stuff was deep and made sense!

What the hell happened to Stangroom? He posts on other subjects like an educated, rational, mature adult, and then turns into a 13year old on Facebook feuding with classmates when it comes to Gnus?

Interestingly, to read Stangroom’s postings on the Gnu Atheists, you’d be hard pressed to find a better description of him than McLaren’s phony description of the Gnus. I guess it IS projection, isn’t it?

Repetitive rage can also be a sign of a clinical depression – especially in men.

Seriously, that bugs me. Maybe I’m completely ignorant about that, but where does McLaren get that from? No psychiatrist / clinical psychologist treating me ever mentioned such a link, if my memory serves me right. If such a link exists, I really would like to be pointed to relevant info.

I don’t have time for the new atheist idiots right now.

Yet, Stangroom still manages to sift through more than 200 comments (If he only read this thread) to find one comment which he thinks shows that we’re operating by mob rule? Well, what he fails to mention is, that McLaren didn’t just criticize Gnus, she completely misrepresented them. (I still giggle about us being “bomb-makers”.)

I wonder what he thinks about feminists who take mansplainers apart?

Comments closed, of course.

What a cowardly thing to do, of course. Or does he think we could “mob” him into closing his blog?

I can imagine Islamists and scientologists and climate change deniers and holocaust deniers everywhere applauding Rieux’s sentiments. Yes, we can mobilise large numbers of people and use scorn in order to communicate our “community’s” disapproval of a particular kind of “harmful” behaviour.

Let’s try this again:

And that, folks, pretty much says it all.

I can imagine feminists and unions and climate activists and vaccine proponents* everywhere applauding Rieux’s sentiments. Yes, we can mobilise large numbers of people and use scorn in order to communicate our “community’s” disapproval of a particular kind of “harmful” behaviour.

Or does he seriously believe that no community, even an embattled minority, should ever criticize or scorn those who have behaved unethically toward it? The gnu-bashers are made of scorn. It’s their raisin date, as the Pharyngula meme goes. This piece by Stangroom positively drips with scorn. The difference is that they haven’t shown and can’t show any crossing of legitimate ethical lines on the part of those they scorn. Quite the contrary. It’s a smug, self-generated hostility of which they appear to have an limitless supply.

some person writes something critical about the new atheists; new atheists go berserk;

they’ll shut you down if they don’t like the cut of your jib

They’re not interested in a rational exchange of views

It’s like literally hundreds of substantive comments – including every one by Rieux on the matter – are simply invisible to him.

Don’t let them set your agenda, and don’t respond to their criticisms (because you’ll just get sucked into an undignified slanging match which you can’t hope to “win” – they have the numbers). And always remember that very few people outside their tribe take their substantive views seriously. The blogosphere is very misleading in that respect.)

Because it’s all about power and numbers anyway. Nothing to do with the veracity of anyone’s arguments. Gnus are still totally in the minority so feel free to fling unfounded accusations at them, Karla, and you can safely treat their responses as so much noise. They don’t have the numbers on their side, so it’s cool.

*For none of these is any imagination required. All of them have of course engaged in public scorn.

The difference is that they haven’t shown and can’t show any crossing of legitimate ethical lines on the part of those they scorn.

By which I mean, of course, unethical behavior that forms the basis for their endless scorn. I’m not claiming every gnu always in all contexts behaves perfectly ethically. (This shouldn’t have to be noted, but given the propensity to actively misconstrue and quotemine…)

Just as a side note, I’m amused that McLaren’s post appeared a couple of weeks before the announcement of Dawkins’ children’s book. Because that’s what people consumed by rage, despair, and gut-wrenching terror do – write books for children with titles like The Magic of Reality.

Well, Jeremy…at least it’s physically possible for people to reply to me here. That’s more than can be said for you. I know: you think you’ve made that objection superfluous with your little “irony” about the yellow streak. You haven’t. It’s still ugly to talk smack about people while making it physically impossible for them to reply.

Remember when Stangroom was going to school us on the crimes against civility committed by the Gnu Atheists? He got out a handful of posts over the space of a week or two, was completely silent for months, and then bounced back by attacking completely reasonable anonymous comments. He’s a credit to… ummmm… well, I’m sure his mom likes him.

There’s nothing funnier than some moron like Stangroom calling other people idiots and morons in the name of civility… except the inevitable part where someone claims I’m doing the same thing, thereby missing the point entirely and showing exactly the sort of inability to comprehend basic logic that seems endemic among philosophers of a certain bent.

(Maybe I should put something in round brackets that will convince me that I’m immune to criticism… someone help me out here?)

There is a point in there (in JS’s post) about community pressure and the fact that anybody can use it to try to shut people down. That’s true, of course. But then that’s what McLaren was doing with her initial post – she was using the existing community-feeling of faith-huggers and gnu-haters to try to shut down a particular kind of discussion. She uses her type; we use our type. It’s not a matter of Good Innocent McLaren not doing that and Evil Guilty gnus doing it – it’s a matter of both doing it. And she has the numbers and The Majority; we’re the despised minority. JS reminds her of that himself –

And always remember that very few people outside their tribe take their substantive views seriously.

In other words, always remember that they are a despised minority. Do feel perfectly justified in heaping more ordure on the despised minority, because they are, after all, a despised minority.

Well, the “point” seems to me that it is okay to be dishonest and rude in order to try to shut down atheists, but it is not okay to be honest and critical in order to counter the dishonesty. But yeah, it is all about who has the power, numbers, and blank checks… and it ain’t us, so we’re not worth anything to the accommodationists.

It’s also rather ridiculous that Stangroom pointed to Rieux, of all people, while claiming Gnus “get to decide whether behaviour is harmful; they get to decide whether behaviour really does cross legitimate ethical lines.” Rieux went out of his way to make a solid case against McLaren, repeatedly quoting her and pointing out her dishonesty and misrepresentations. One might argue with Rieux’s case, but that’s precisely why it doesn’t work to support what Stangroom is trying to say! Presenting arguments on blogs where anyone can respond is not the same as simply deciding something is so.

Yeah, and that wasn’t even a great quote mine! First, he stupidly picked one of the people with the most detailed and well-reasoned series of comments in that thread, and then picked out one bit that isn’t even particularly negative even out of context.

A smarter man than that would have simply mined my first quote in this thread, “I’m a rude, contentious, argumentative asshole,” and then shouted “CHECKMATE, ATHEISTS!!” Of course, the fact that I’m also an anonymous nobody on the Internet with a profoundly unpopular blog wouldn’t make a difference. :)

Oh well I don’t know if that would have been smarter. I agreed with someone that I’m bossy and hostile, up there somewhere…it wouldn’t be all that smart just to point to what we cop to. What we admit is what can’t be pointed at with “aha!” on account of how we’ve admitted it. That’s one reason we admit it. It’s also, of course, why he admits it – like admitting that it’s chickenshit to barf on people and then close comments.

So we can’t say “aha!”. We can’t say “what you don’t realize is that you’re chickenshit for closing comments.” We have to leave off the “you don’t realize” bit.

He could have said “yes you admit you’re rude but hey, you really are rude.” That’s probably less rewarding than quote-mining Rieux.

Ah now that’s a much larger question. I don’t know. It has baffled me for nearly two years now. The frothing hostility, the settled hatred of new atheists, the obsessive attention – I don’t know what happened.

I don’t know why he still reads B&W. I don’t know why he still combs through B&W looking for something to fume about. I don’t know why he doesn’t just move on.

There is a point in there (in JS’s post) about community pressure and the fact that anybody can use it to try to shut people down. That’s true, of course.

But it should be noted that that was a point Rieux made, and we know Stangroom knew it because it’s in the passage he quoted from Rieux:

Obviously such a response can be abused by prejudiced majorities (and that, indeed, is what McLaren is pretending has happened here)

Then he goes out of his way to advise McLaren that as they’re part of the gnu-loathing majority she should go ahead and heap dishonest scorn while refusing to heed the criticisms of the targeted group. Not particularly well thought through, is it?

Right now, I’m full of rage at the airline baggage charges, fear that I won’t be able to fit all my stuff in my luggage, despair at having to buy another piece of luggage at the last minute and pay $50 for the airline to carry it… and fanatical devotion to Richard Dawkins. Sorry, I’m going on vacation next week.

Point is, Stangroom seems like a picture-perfect example of the sort of thing that McLaren is falsely ascribing to Gnu Atheists, and neither of them seem to realize it.

I mean… Ophelia, did you mean “if they pay!”? Because I’m only inviting as far as whatever cool stuff my wife books for us ahead of time, we can book for 3-4(if you have a plus one) and you can tag along. I’m generous enough to spring for a meal and a few drinks, but plane tickets and hotel rooms are all on you!

And gosh, I’m so glad to get away from the negativity of Stedman, McLaren, Stangroom, and the rest. They make me tired. :)

Oo, something that pisses me off more than the “I’m too busy to reply cuz I’m a Very Serious Person” argument: a thin-skinned jerk taking shots at people without giving them a chance to respond. It’s why pseudonymous bloggers with open comments have a thousand times more integrity and credibility to me than assholes like Stangroom.

Joe, yup, that’s what I meant. I can’t afford to go to conventions and things unless I’m invited as a speaker and they pay at least travel expenses. I certainly did not mean that you would! Hence “they” as opposed to “you.” (And don’t worry, they never do invite me.)

She’s claiming that this is “New Atheist Bullying”… which is the same sort of bullying that fundamentalist theists claim when they aren’t allowed to discriminate against women or homosexuals. We are bullying them, when we object to them bullying other people. It is horseshit when theists claim it to justify their sexism and homophobia, and it is just as much bullshit when anti-“New Atheists” pull the same stunt in response to fair criticism.

The whole gnu-bashing spectacle is rather sad. For all their verbiage, there’s never even anything original or interesting to glean. The same tired tropes over and over and over and over and over, from the same pack of self-satisfied, intellectually dishonest blowhards.

Can you grok what the motivation behind this is? I don’t understand the point in all of this. I’m just some random guy with no real influence more than anyone else and much less than most… and yet I know that Chris Stedman has devoted part of a pretty big complaining blog to complaining about what I said about him. I’m no big deal, but I’m not convinced that he’s a big deal either, so I guess that’s a wash…

Anyways, my bigger point is wondering why Jean Kazez would claim to to watching us, while being too cowardly to comment on us directly, while ALSO thinking she’s scoring some points with someone somewhere who will like her more if she is rude to people who I consider to be her intellectual superiors.

I’m unfamiliar with why you are disappointed by Kazez. I know her only for her opinion that academical topics must be sequestered and revealed only to anointed Philosopher-Kings who may guide the droning masses with iron fists and divine wisdom.

I don’t know why [Stangroom] still reads B&W. I don’t know why he still combs through B&W looking for something to fume about. I don’t know why he doesn’t just move on.

My inner (and outer) cynic says it’s a combination of a search for blog material & the amount of traffic those gnu-related posts then bring. It certainly can’t be because JS wants to deliver a crushing rhetorical blow or unassailable argument or even change your mind a bit – I think even through his rage-coloured glasses he’d be able to see that won’t happen. Maybe he just likes the superior feeling of giving you (or your commenters) a public slap and then closing the comments, like a 6 year-old giving the finger and slamming their bedroom door in a huff. Speculation aside, whatever the reason for the behaviour, the behaviour itself is bloody childish.

Cynicism aside – but without a shadow of a doubt – I’d never have heard of Stangroom, Ruse, Mooney, Stedman or any of the others on the accommodationist bash-wagon if not for people like you, PZ, Jerry Coyne et al responding to their petulant whining, double standards and lack of any reasonable argument.

I’m jumping over to the newer thread (though this one has been impressive! I suppose Ophelia’s computer troubles gave it an assist), but as a quick parting shot, articulett, I think Dirk’s Svlad’s point is that being “disappointed in Kazez” implies that one has some kind of high expectations for her. Apparently Svlad doesn’t. (Neither do I.)